{"id":19171,"date":"2013-10-11T05:13:51","date_gmt":"2013-10-11T11:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=19171"},"modified":"2013-10-11T05:15:22","modified_gmt":"2013-10-11T11:15:22","slug":"fighting-harriers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/11\/fighting-harriers\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting Harriers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The seriousness of confrontations between Northern Harriers varies with the situation.\u00a0 Conflicts over food, especially during harsh winters, can be intense and dramatic but they often seem to spar with each other just for the “fun” of it.\u00a0 I’ve often seen and occasionally photographed both extremes of aggressive behavior.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This photo was taken at Farmington\u00a0in December\u00a0several years ago through light fog and after a heavy frost.\u00a0 At first glance it appears to be\u00a0a serious fight but I’m not completely convinced of that.\u00a0 In this case, one bird\u00a0was on the ground as the other cruised by, they skirmished for about 1-2 seconds, then each resumed their previous activities as if nothing had happened.<\/p>\n

A furtive confrontation, then normalcy.\u00a0 It may be anthropomorphic of me to think they might be doing it for fun but I can’t help myself… I’ve seen it so very often and it’s so different from when they are actually fighting directly over food.\u00a0 That I have also seen and believe me it’s very different from this and very serious.\u00a0 It has been documented that Northern Harriers sometimes “play” so who knows what is really going on.\u00a0 I certainly don’t…<\/p>\n

It’s not unusual for two of these birds to be hunting together (they often hunt singly of course) and then\u00a0rush each other and have a short aerial confrontation and then resume hunting together as if nothing of consequence had occurred.\u00a0 It usually happens very fast and it’s difficult to photograph but fascinating to watch.<\/p>\n

I also see these kinds of seemingly playful interactions between females and the significantly smaller males but the aggression\u00a0rarely turns serious because of their difference in size. \u00a0Females win virtually all aggressive interactions with males<\/p>\n

This is the first time I’ve seen this blue in the primaries (top bird).\u00a0 Perhaps a prismatic effect from the angle of the light and feathers?<\/p>\n

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

The seriousness of confrontations between Northern Harriers varies with the situation. Conflicts over food, especially during harsh winters, can be intense and dramatic but they often seem to spar with each other just for the “fun” of it. I’ve often seen and occasionally photographed both extremes of aggressive behavior.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19172,"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":[334,394,341],"tags":[86,140,178,234,1689,311],"class_list":["post-19171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-northern-harriers","tag-circus-cyaneus","tag-fighting","tag-hunting","tag-northern-harrier","tag-prismatic-effect","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/northern-harrier-7088-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4Zd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19171","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=19171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}