{"id":164612,"date":"2024-10-05T06:07:02","date_gmt":"2024-10-05T12:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=164612"},"modified":"2024-10-05T08:23:39","modified_gmt":"2024-10-05T14:23:39","slug":"a-very-close-encounter-between-a-northern-harrier-and-a-coopers-hawk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/05\/a-very-close-encounter-between-a-northern-harrier-and-a-coopers-hawk\/","title":{"rendered":"A Very Close Encounter Between A Northern Harrier And A Cooper’s Hawk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days ago, as I was cresting the hill on top of Goose Egg Island at Farmington Bay WMA, the ruckus was already in progress.<\/p>\n

Before I even got to the top of the hill, a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk zoomed right in front of my pickup’s windshield. At the time I assumed it was in pursuit of a small bird in the trees to my right, but I was wrong. As soon as I crested the hill I realized it was in a panic because it was being chased by at least two, maybe three, Northern Harriers. And after a quick review of some of my photos, I now believe there were two Cooper’s Hawks involved in the kerfuffle.<\/p>\n

There was a real donnybrook going on at the top of the hill. 4-5 raptors of two species were chasing each other in flight as they appeared, disappeared and then reappeared over the steep edge of the hill. As you can imagine, I was spraying my lens all over the place as I tried to capture some of the action. In this situation, with multiple raptors appearing and disappearing so quickly over the hill’s edge, getting sharp flight shots was hugely difficult.<\/p>\n

I got a few photos I like. The first one below is one of my favorites.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The juvenile Cooper’s Hawk I’d seen a few seconds earlier had landed on a cement structure on top of the hill and at least two harriers were dive bombing it, repeatedly. Here the talons of one of the harriers came within a few inches of the Coop’s head.<\/p>\n

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

1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the next shot in the burst. I got one more photo that included both birds but by then the harrier was too much out of focus.<\/p>\n

My life has been pretty hectic lately, so I still haven’t had a chance to review and process more of my photos of this extended altercation but I’m pretty sure you’ll be seeing more photos of it soon.<\/p>\n

We all may be surprised by what they reveal.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two days ago, as I was cresting the hill on top of Goose Egg Island at Farmington Bay WMA, the excitement was already in progress. (2 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164618,"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":[334,380,2782,394,341],"tags":[7643,7644,1008,7642,146,2741,440,311],"class_list":["post-164612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-coopers-hawk-diurnal-raptors","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-northern-harriers","tag-dive-bombing-raptors","tag-donnybrook","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-fight-between-northern-harrier-and-coopers-hawk","tag-flight","tag-goose-egg-island","tag-mobbing","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/coopers-hawk-northern-harrier-0126b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-GP2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164612","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=164612"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164647,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164612\/revisions\/164647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}