{"id":169827,"date":"2025-10-20T06:06:46","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T12:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=169827"},"modified":"2025-10-20T09:40:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T15:40:21","slug":"american-kestrel-repeatedly-attacking-a-red-tailed-hawk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/20\/american-kestrel-repeatedly-attacking-a-red-tailed-hawk\/","title":{"rendered":"American Kestrel Repeatedly Attacking A Red-tailed Hawk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lesson learned – don’t piss off a female kestrel.<\/p>\n

Two days ago I found the immature Red-tailed Hawk hunting from the same three light poles over an elevated roadway that I’ve found ‘him’ hunting from at least three times recently. Lighting conditions and setting were less than ideal but I took a few photos anyway.<\/p>\n

I’m glad I stuck with him because things were about to get exciting.<\/p>\n

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He repeatedly flew from pole to pole as he hunted the steep slopes on both sides of the elevated road.<\/p>\n

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Occasionally he dived on prey, but each time he came up empty. His dives were pretty interesting because they were almost straight down, which sometimes gave him somewhat unusual flight postures.<\/p>\n

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After a while he flew about 75 yards to a steeply sloped chain link fence in front of a bridge on the same road and hunted from there.<\/p>\n

I suspect he knew from previous experience that the resident pair of American Kestrels might take exception to his presence in their hunting territory but apparently he decided to take his chances.<\/p>\n

I believe he regretted his decision.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Attack #1 – 1 photo.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Almost immediately the female kestrel started dive bombing him, repeatedly.<\/p>\n

I had to move my pickup to photograph the action and while I was doing so I could see her attacking him again and again. This is the first attack I was able to photograph.<\/p>\n

Each of these photos (except photo #3 above) is presented in the order they were taken. Sometimes I only got one photo I liked of an attack and other times I got as many as four.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Attack #2 – 2 photos.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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She came from almost every angle and direction possible, apparently in an attempt to catch him off guard. She was usually…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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screaming the entire way. I could easily hear her from my vantage point (her cries are actually ringing in my ears as I type this).<\/p>\n

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Attack #3 – 1 photo.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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At times he appeared to try to be nonchalant about her attacks, barely reacting to them. Other times she came in close enough that he had no choice but to react.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Attack #4 – 1 photo.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Timing of these shots was tricky. I was far enough away that I could usually time my shots to get at least one photo that included both birds. But the kestrel was a speed demon, flying erratically and I never knew which direction she would come from, so…<\/p>\n

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Attack #5 – 1 photo.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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in some attacks I barely kept her in frame for a single shot.<\/p>\n

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Attack #6 – 2 photos.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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This time she was coming in head-on to the hawk, so she played it safe and…<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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pulled up at a safe distance.<\/p>\n

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Attack #7 – 4 photos.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Other times she threw safety to the wind and really challenged him by coming in close. Here she’s coming almost straight at him, which…<\/p>\n

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made him lose his cool.<\/p>\n

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She came in so close that he almost fell off his perch. I’m sure her persistent screaming added to the effect.<\/p>\n

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But she pulled up in time for her to be safe, which allowed him to regain his balance on the fence. I didn’t clip her wing in the original image but I lost the tip of her left wing when I leveled the photo (based on the vertical fence post, the bridge is sloped as I presented it).<\/p>\n

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Attack #8 – 2 photos.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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This is the last attack I photographed.<\/p>\n

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After she passed by, he decided he’d had enough of this nonsense and took off to the south.<\/p>\n

I never saw him again but the next morning (yesterday) this same female kestrel and her mate put in quite a show for me by “playing” with a large flock of Black-billed Magpies for almost half an hour.<\/p>\n

But those photos will have to wait for a few days. At this point I’ve only had time to barely look at them and besides, 17 photos in this post are more than enough.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Lesson learned – don’t piss off a female kestrel. (17 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169857,"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":[340,334,394,450],"tags":[5601,140,3623,311],"class_list":["post-169827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-female-american-kestrel","tag-fighting","tag-juvenile-red-tailed-hawk","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/red-tailed-hawk-5980-for-FB-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Ib9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169827","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=169827"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169887,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169827\/revisions\/169887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}