“Among the Plains Indians of North America, counting coup is the warrior tradition of winning prestige against an enemy in battle. Historically, any blow struck against the enemy counted as a coup, but the most prestigious acts included touching an enemy warrior with a hand, bow, or coup stick and escaping unharmed, and without harming the enemy, except for the enemy’s wounded pride.”<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Yesterday my friend and neighbor Shane Smith joined me for a long birding trip to the west desert. Shane has taken up serious bird photography fairly recently and it turns out that he’s an enthusiastic and quick study. He absorbs the birding info and photography tips I provide like a sponge, which of course delights this old teacher. He’s also great company on a long trip like that and we found more birds than I expected to. It was a good morning.<\/p>\n
One of the more interesting encounters we had was with an adult Red-tailed Hawk that was acting like a juvenile. As ‘he’ was flying in circles around my pickup he was usually screaming, just like a juvie this time of year. Based on his behavior, I was sure he was a juvenile until I saw his red tail. He continued circling and screaming for a very long time.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/red-tailed-hawk-3917-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-3917-ron-dudley\\"")
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And when this little songbird (I’m not sure of its ID so I won’t hazard a guess) started chasing and dive-bombing him, the intensity and frequency of his screaming increased significantly.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/red-tailed-hawk-3918-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-3918-ron-dudley\\"")
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Based on the time stamps on my photos, the hawk circled the vicinity of my pickup for nearly eight minutes with the songbird hot on his tail for most of that time. You can imagine how many photos I took in eight minutes of this behavior, but it wasn’t easy to get both birds in the frame and sharp.<\/p>\n
You might expect the songbird to maintain a safe distance from the much larger hawk, but that wasn’t always the case.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/red-tailed-hawk-3049-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-3049-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
Tag, you’re it. This is close enough to “counting coup” for me.<\/p>\n
That little songbird was deadly serious about trying to drive the hawk out of its territory. Ballsy little bird.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Edit: I’m leaning toward Common Grackle for the songbird, but I still can’t be sure. I don’t remember seeing grackles in that area before.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the tradition of the Plains Indians. (3 photos)<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160745,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,394,450],"tags":[5765,5893,140,440,6838,311,533,7502],"class_list":["post-160744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-adult-red-tailed-hawk","tag-defending-territory","tag-fighting","tag-mobbing","tag-shane-smith","tag-utah-2","tag-west-desert","tag-what-does-counting-coup-mean"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/red-tailed-hawk-3049-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-FOE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160744"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160779,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160744\/revisions\/160779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}