{"id":20469,"date":"2013-12-06T06:05:41","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T13:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=20469"},"modified":"2013-12-06T06:05:41","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T13:05:41","slug":"rough-legged-hawk-hunting-technique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/06\/rough-legged-hawk-hunting-technique\/","title":{"rendered":"Rough-legged Hawk Hunting Technique"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like some other buteos, depending on conditions the Rough-legged Hawk may hunt from the air using flapping\/gliding flight or from an elevated perch but their tendency to hunt in flight goes up significantly with increasing wind speed.\u00a0 This makes sense because hovering in the wind requires less energy than flapping flight.<\/p>\n

This bird was hunting voles along the causeway to Antelope Island when the wind velocity and direction was just right to often give me an almost stationary\u00a0subject as it hovered\u00a0in the\u00a0air\u00a0and scanned\u00a0the elevated shoreline for voles.\u00a0 I even had a good light angle – that’s a combination that doesn’t happen very\u00a0often with me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough-legged<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3 ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in, canvas added for composition<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Interestingly, there’s some evidence to indicate that this species detects and identifies vole urine and feces from the air and then concentrates its hunting in areas of high prey density.\u00a0 I don’t know if that was happening here but while I was with this bird it captured several voles and even consumed one of them in flight.\u00a0 Usually this species flies to a nearby perch to eat its meal but there are few perches available along this part of the causeway and the vole was a small one so it was easier to swallow.<\/p>\n

I’ve cropped fairly tightly on this hawk, which I often do with plain sky backgrounds.\u00a0 There’s a vertical color gradient in the background blues but it’s not pronounced enough to be particularly interesting.\u00a0 I think the nice detail on the bird at this close range\u00a0makes up for it.<\/p>\n

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

Like some other buteos, depending on conditions the Rough-legged Hawk may hunt from the air using flapping\/gliding flight or from an elevated perch but their tendency to hunt in flight goes up significantly with increasing wind speed. This makes sense because hovering in the wind requires less energy than flapping flight.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20470,"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":[3,334,358],"tags":[31,534,1347,1315,269,1781,315,328],"class_list":["post-20469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-rough-legged-hawks","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-buteo-lagopus","tag-hovering","tag-hunting-technique","tag-rough-legged-hawk","tag-urine-and-feces","tag-vole","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/rough-legged-hawk-2478-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5k9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20469","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=20469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}