{"id":20192,"date":"2013-11-25T06:18:51","date_gmt":"2013-11-25T13:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=20192"},"modified":"2013-11-25T06:18:51","modified_gmt":"2013-11-25T13:18:51","slug":"northern-harrier-showing-food-source-adaptability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/25\/northern-harrier-showing-food-source-adaptability\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Harrier Showing Food Source Adaptability"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last winter Northern Harriers really struggled to survive here in northern Utah.\u00a0 For several months it was bitter cold with a thick layer of snow on the ground which made it close to impossible for our wintering raptors (including Barn Owls)\u00a0to find and\u00a0catch their typical prey – voles.\u00a0 So harriers were forced to look for other food sources, including small birds.\u00a0 Songbirds are relatively scarce here that time of year but this harrier got lucky.<\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Though it’s difficult to see, this harrier is feeding on a small bird pinned to the ground with its feet.\u00a0 It took the harrier almost 10 minutes to consume its meal but I deleted most of those shots because the busy background combined with flying feathers made for pretty messy images.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This goofy pose makes me chuckle.\u00a0 The harrier was cleaning the top of its head by rubbing it against his shoulder.\u00a0 In my experience this\u00a0 type of grooming usually takes place after the meal is finished but this bird hasn’t yet had dessert.\u00a0 I was pleasantly surprised to catch the eye open\u00a0and not covered with the nictitating membrane during this process.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Here the bird is swallowing one last morsel after the feathers have been removed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

While the bird was feeding I struggled with the decision of whether or not to remove my tc.\u00a0 I wanted good detail in the feeding images but I also didn’t want to clip wings in take-off shots and I knew the bird was likely to take off toward me because of the phragmites directly behind the bird.\u00a0 In the end I\u00a0left the tc on and clipped or cut off wings\u00a0during most of the take-off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0This is the only shot with nothing clipped or cut off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Despite the cut off wing I include this image so you\u00a0can see the clumps of feathers still stuck (possibly frozen) to the feet of the harrier.<\/p>\n

During winter, harriers in the northern part of their range feed on voles almost exclusively.\u00a0 I’ve seen harriers feeding on prey several hundred times over the years and this may be only the third or fourth instance I\u00a0remember where the prey was a small bird.<\/p>\n

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

Last winter Northern Harriers really struggled to survive here in northern Utah. For several months it was bitter cold with a thick layer of snow on the ground which made it close to impossible for our wintering raptors (including Barn Owls) to find and catch their typical prey – voles. So harriers were forced to look for other food sources, including small birds. Songbirds are relatively scarce here that time of year but this harrier got lucky.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20197,"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":[334,392,341],"tags":[86,234,256,286,453,315],"class_list":["post-20192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-northern-harriers","tag-circus-cyaneus","tag-northern-harrier","tag-prey","tag-snow","tag-teleconverter","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/northern-harrier-1897-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5fG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20192","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=20192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}