{"id":16239,"date":"2013-06-17T04:00:28","date_gmt":"2013-06-17T10:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=16239"},"modified":"2013-06-16T06:25:05","modified_gmt":"2013-06-16T12:25:05","slug":"another-ferruginous-hawk-nest-with-chicks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/17\/another-ferruginous-hawk-nest-with-chicks\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Ferruginous Hawk Nest With Chicks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I posted images of a Ferruginous Hawk nest<\/a> with chicks in Montana.\u00a0 I actually photographed two of them.\u00a0 These chicks were slightly older than those in my first post.\u00a0 A very long drive was required to get to this nest so the images were taken at mid-day and the light was harsh and there’s no light in the eyes of the birds.<\/p>\n

This nest was very close to a major highway which surprised me.\u00a0 Ferruginous Hawks are known to be extremely shy when nesting but this pair had obviously become completely\u00a0acclimated to the constant traffic and highway noise.\u00a0 I photographed the nest from the side of the road (in the barrow pit, actually) and never exited my pickup.\u00a0 The birds weren’t disturbed in the least by my presence.\u00a0 In fact, one of the\u00a0adults spent the entire time perched on the\u00a0top of a power pole alongside the road\u00a0within about\u00a030 feet of my pickup.\u00a0 I had to look almost straight up to see it.<\/p>\n

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\"ferruginous<\/a><\/p>\n

The other adult was at the nest only briefly and spent most of its time perched in a nearby Cottonwood\u00a0tree.\u00a0 There were at least three chicks – all seemingly healthy and active.<\/p>\n

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\"ferruginous<\/a><\/p>\n

They spent most of their time sleeping, yawning and stretching.<\/p>\n

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\"ferruginous<\/a><\/p>\n

And pooping.\u00a0 At this age the chicks seemed fastidious about nest sanitation by defecating over the nest edge.\u00a0 It was both endearing and tense to watch the wobbly chick slowly and very carefully turn around and back up to the edge of the nest prior to doing\u00a0its duty.\u00a0 Here one of the chicks finally got close enough and…<\/p>\n

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\"ferruginous<\/a><\/p>\n

let fly.\u00a0 You can see the excreta in the air behind the bird (at first glance it may appear to be a tree twig).<\/p>\n

Watching this happen made me wonder how often unstable chicks fall out of the nest while defecating – especially when the wind’s blowing (as it often is in Montana).<\/p>\n

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\"ferruginous<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the nest tree.\u00a0 The image was taken at 100mm which should give you an idea of how close the nest was to the highway – very unusual for Ferruginous Hawks in my experience.\u00a0 I would never approach a Ferrug \u00a0nest this closely in an isolated area where the birds haven’t been acclimated to human activity.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0 I’m on the road again and will be for much of the week.\u00a0 I’ll have no computer access on this trip so I won’t be able to respond to any comments that may be made (though I do get them via phone email and enjoy reading them while I’m in the field).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I posted images of a Ferruginous Hawk nest with chicks in Montana. I actually photographed two of them. These chicks were slightly older than those in my first post.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16241,"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":[334,377,1493,391],"tags":[531,740,1474,1528,138,220,1527],"class_list":["post-16239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ferruginous-hawks","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-buteo-regalis","tag-chicks","tag-defecate","tag-excreta","tag-ferruginous-hawk","tag-montana-2","tag-nest-sanitation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/ferruginous-hawk-6234-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4dV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16239","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=16239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}