{"id":19822,"date":"2013-11-07T06:35:45","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T13:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=19822"},"modified":"2013-11-07T06:35:45","modified_gmt":"2013-11-07T13:35:45","slug":"ferruginous-hawk-nests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/07\/ferruginous-hawk-nests\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferruginous Hawk Nests"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past summer I photographed several active Ferruginous Hawk nests and was\u00a0impressed by their size differences and\u00a0the variation in elevations of the nests from the ground.\u00a0 Each of these\u00a0nests was photographed in\u00a0southwest Montana in June of this year.<\/p>\n

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

Ferruginous Hawks are remarkably flexible in nest site selection, probably because elevated nesting sites in their preferred habitat are scarce.\u00a0 Of the three widely nesting buteos in North America (Ferruginous, Red-tailed and Swainson’s Hawks), this species nests closest to the ground on average.<\/p>\n

This nest is relatively small for the species, I suspect because it’s a relatively new construction.\u00a0 These birds often reuse nests for years and add to them annually.<\/p>\n

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

Roughly half of their nests are in relatively low trees and shrubs (this is the same nest as in the\u00a0previous image), though they also nest on cliffs, ground outcrops and utility structures.\u00a0 This nest isn’t as elevated as it might appear\u00a0because the tree is growing in a gully.<\/p>\n

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

We\u00a0found this nest in a half-dead shrub only a few feet off the ground, though it is on the side of a hill so my shooting angle makes it appear higher.\u00a0 As you can see the nest is massive\u00a0(notice the\u00a0hawk’s head for size perspective)\u00a0and probably quite old.<\/p>\n

Up until about 1900 these hawks often used bleached\u00a0bison bones (particularly ribs) in nest construction and you can see by the size of these twigs and branches that they’re fully capable of carrying such large construction pieces to the nest.<\/p>\n

When artificial nest platforms are provided for this species, in order to get maximum usage from the hawks\u00a0they’re typically built\u00a0to a height of only 6 to 14′.<\/p>\n

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

But this is probably the largest and oldest Ferruginous Hawk nest I’ve seen (this bird is a dark morph).\u00a0 It was built on the ground, atop a rocky outcrop.<\/p>\n

Researchers believe that ground nesting prevailed in the distant past, partly because it’s likely that trees are more prominent now then they were before prairie fires were controlled.\u00a0 The bulky and inflexible sticks these birds use for their nests cannot\u00a0easily be woven and held together in trees so when Ferruginous Hawks build elevated nests in trees they\u00a0typically use nests of\u00a0smaller raptors or corvids as a base or substrate.<\/p>\n

Ferruginous Hawks are particularly sensitive to nest disturbance by humans and I took care to avoid causing them any alarm.\u00a0 Each of these nests was close to a road and the hawks have become acclimated to traffic.\u00a0 I always photographed them from the road\u00a0and never\u00a0got out of my pickup.\u00a0 I noticed no signs of nervousness from the hawks.<\/p>\n

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

This past summer I photographed several active Ferruginous Hawk nests and was impressed by their size differences and the variation in elevations of the nests from the ground. Each of these nests was photographed in southwest Montana in June of this year.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19824,"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":[334,377,1493,391],"tags":[1730,531,969,138,220,228,1731],"class_list":["post-19822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ferruginous-hawks","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-bison-bones","tag-buteo-regalis","tag-dark-morph","tag-ferruginous-hawk","tag-montana-2","tag-nest","tag-nest-platform"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/ferruginous-hawk-5490-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-59I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19822","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=19822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}