{"id":166768,"date":"2025-02-11T05:59:01","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T12:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=166768"},"modified":"2025-02-11T07:05:02","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T14:05:02","slug":"male-american-kestrel-a-special-photo-of-a-very-special-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/11\/male-american-kestrel-a-special-photo-of-a-very-special-bird\/","title":{"rendered":"Male American Kestrel – A Special Photo Of A Very Special Bird"},"content":{"rendered":"

Readers know that I’ve been watching and photographing “AOM” for several years now. He’s a male American Kestrel that was banded by HawkWatch International as a nestling on Antelope Island back in June of ’21. I refer to him as AOM because the green band HWI placed on his left leg has AOM stamped on it in large black letters.<\/p>\n

I’ve become quite attached to him, but until yesterday morning I hadn’t seen him this year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I got lots of excellent and interesting photos of him yesterday but this one is one of my favorites. In fact, this takeoff\/flight posture might be my favorite kestrel flight posture ever. There are more things that I like about this photo than I care to list. Obviously, the less than attractive rooftop setting isn’t one of them but I can live with it.<\/p>\n

I know this guy is AOM because in other photos I can see the band and the letters clearly.<\/p>\n

I have an interesting and entertaining story, documented with photos of course, to tell about this bird on my blog but that will have to wait a day or two because I may be learning more details about that story sometime today or tomorrow.<\/p>\n

I look forward to telling it. I suppose that’s a shameless teaser, but it is what it is.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Note: In January of 2024, when I sent photos of AOM to Jesse Watson, Research Biologist and Banding Coordinator for HWI, this was Jesse’s response:<\/em><\/p>\n

“I’m sure you’re interested in some details on this kestrel. His colorband is Green AOM and his USGS band number is 1893-50584. He actually has a little bit of history, and your report allows us to continue broadening our understanding of how long he has survived and where he has moved. Jessica Taylor, a biologist on our Long-term Monitoring and Community Scientist team banded him at a nestbox on the northwest part of the island on 6.24.21 as a nestling. He was about 22 days old when banded (so he should be just about exactly 973 days old, today :)). He fledged along with 3 siblings, one female, and two males. He was the smallest at 99 grams (his siblings were all 110+ grams). Since then, he has been resighted and reported 5 times, not including your report. All on Antelope Island between February 16, 2022 and January 2024!”<\/em><\/p>\n

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

I have a history with this bird. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166772,"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":[340,3,334],"tags":[31,7741,7320,146,1432,7319,2738,311],"class_list":["post-166768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-antelope-island","category-birds","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-aol-band-letters","tag-banded-male-american-kestrel","tag-flight","tag-hawkwatch-international","tag-jesse-watson","tag-takeoff","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/american-kestrel-3546b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-HnO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166768","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=166768"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166794,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166768\/revisions\/166794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}