Normally I can’t get anywhere near a wild Prairie Falcon but these falcons were hunting the roads for grasshoppers (it’s my theory that it’s easier for them to see individual hoppers on the road than it is in the thick grass) and the fence posts along the\u00a0roads made convenient hunting perches that they were reluctant to leave.\u00a0 They would spot a grasshopper from their perch, swoop down and eat it, then return to the same or another nearby post\u00a0and do it\u00a0all over again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I’m embarrassed to include this crappy image but it does show a falcon eating a grasshopper on a road and\u00a0many other hoppers in the air above the bird.\u00a0 The plane of focus of my 500mm lens with attached teleconverter is only a few inches so you can only see the insects that are in that plane of focus.\u00a0 There would be many hundreds of others that are out of focus and can’t be seen.\u00a0 Thousands more would fly up in thick clouds\u00a0when disturbed by my moving pickup.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I also found Prairie Falcons eating grasshoppers away from the roads, especially in areas where the grasses were matted down and easier to hunt.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n We found this bird clinging to a small wooden post just as a storm squall rolled in.\u00a0 The wind blew very hard (perhaps 50 mph)\u00a0for about 5 minutes and at the time I was surprised that the bird didn’t take off as we approached and find some cover.\u00a0 It wasn’t until I got home and looked at the images that I figured out why it stayed on\u00a0this exposed perch while the\u00a0wind howled.\u00a0 It’s my theory that those huge talons were able to grasp the small wooden post so well that it had more stability\u00a0there in the wind than it would likely find anywhere else.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n When the wind subsided it flew off a short distance to hunt some more.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n It landed on this huge ball of rusty old wire and scoped out the area for a good hunting spot.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Then it landed in the short grass to gorge itself on grasshoppers.<\/p>\n By this time the storm and clouds\u00a0had moved in and I lost the light so these shots were underexposed (I brought them back up during processing which increased the noise).\u00a0 The tradeoff was that underexposing the images gave me enough shutter speed in the poor light\u00a0to get relatively sharp images.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was fun watching this falcon hunt.\u00a0 It would pounce on a grasshopper, eat it and then pounce again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"prairie](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/prairie-falcon-3858-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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