{"id":18864,"date":"2013-09-30T05:37:11","date_gmt":"2013-09-30T11:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=18864"},"modified":"2013-09-30T06:29:12","modified_gmt":"2013-09-30T12:29:12","slug":"hanging-northern-harrier-hunting-low-and-slow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/30\/hanging-northern-harrier-hunting-low-and-slow\/","title":{"rendered":"“Hanging” Northern Harrier – Hunting Low and Slow"},"content":{"rendered":"

When hunting, Northern Harriers have a distinctive buoyant flight.\u00a0 They glide with wings held in a strong dihedral and\u00a0have low wing loading which allows them to fly low and slow as they search for prey.\u00a0 When watching them hunt there are times I think they’re going to fall right out of the air.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Another reason they can fly at such low speeds is their unusually large and prominent alula or “bastard wing”.\u00a0 Just look at the size of it (marked with small red arrow)\u00a0and then compare it to the alula of a kestrel in flight here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0function of the alula is similar to that of the slats on the leading edge of the wings of\u00a0an airplane\u00a0\u2013 it increases the angle of attack of the wing and\u00a0produces lift, thus helping to prevent a stall\u00a0during slow\u00a0flight.<\/p>\n

This male harrier at Farmington Bay\u00a0is flying extremely slowly as it hunts and is so close to the vegetation that its hanging feet sometimes touch it.\u00a0 I\u00a0suspect that when they use this style of hunting (very slow and close to the ground)\u00a0they’re attempting to locate prey as much by sound as by sight.\u00a0\u00a0 After all, the function of their owl-like facial\u00a0disc\u00a0(unusual in a diurnal raptor)\u00a0is to direct sound to their ears.<\/p>\n

I sometimes refer to this particular harrier hunting posture as its “hanging posture” because not only does the\u00a0body hang down from the wings but the bright yellow feet and legs also hang down from the body rather than being tucked up under the rump in a more aerodynamic position.<\/p>\n

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

When hunting, Northern Harriers have a distinctive buoyant flight. They glide with wings held in a strong dihedral and have low wing loading which allows them to fly low and slow as they search for prey. When watching them hunt there are times I think they’re going to fall right out of the air.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18870,"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":[334,341],"tags":[953,1349,1672,607,178,234,1673],"class_list":["post-18864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-northern-harriers","tag-alula","tag-bastard-wing","tag-circus","tag-facial-disc","tag-hunting","tag-northern-harrier","tag-wing-loading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/northern-harrier-1079-red-arrow-on-alula-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4Ug","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18864","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=18864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}