{"id":20952,"date":"2013-12-26T06:16:47","date_gmt":"2013-12-26T13:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=20952"},"modified":"2013-12-26T06:16:47","modified_gmt":"2013-12-26T13:16:47","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-sucker-punched-by-a-kestrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/26\/red-tailed-hawk-sucker-punched-by-a-kestrel\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk Sucker-punched By A Kestrel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I photographed an attack by an American Kestrel on an adult Red-tailed Hawk.\u00a0 What made it unusual was the fact that the hawk didn’t see the kestrel coming, so its reaction to being thumped on the head\u00a0was, well… amusing.<\/p>\n

The images are of mediocre quality because of a poor light angle and great distance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/a><\/p>\n

I had been looking for Golden Eagles and various buteos in northern Box Elder County (a Christmas morning tradition)\u00a0when I came across this Red-tailed Hawk\u00a0being harassed by a male\u00a0kestrel.\u00a0 Notice that in this shot the kestrel has just buzzed the hawk from left to\u00a0right.\u00a0 The little falcon didn’t come very close and the hawk seemed almost bored by the feeble attempt at\u00a0harassment.<\/p>\n

I only include these first two images to set the stage for the event.\u00a0 Here I haven’t rotated the image to level the upper wire\u00a0because doing so would cut off most of the right wing of the kestrel.\u00a0\u00a0The strange\u00a0“shadow or halo” just above the upper wire is actually another wire in the foreground parallel to it.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/a><\/p>\n

After it passed, the kestrel kept going, almost to the next pole down the line\u00a0so the hawk kept it’s back to the direction of the kestrel in apparent dismissal.\u00a0 That was a mistake.\u00a0\u00a0The kestrel came back…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/a><\/p>\n

and blindsided the hawk by striking it on the back of the head with its feet.\u00a0 I\u00a0 wish my shutter had clicked a millisecond earlier to catch the\u00a0contact\u00a0but I’m sure that what I saw through my lens was\u00a0actual physical contact.\u00a0 The next shot in the\u00a0sequence (my Canon 7D shoots 8 frames\/second in a burst) shows the full reflex reaction of the hawk to the attack.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/a><\/p>\n

The hawk jumped straight up into the air in surprise.<\/p>\n

It then came back down onto the post and almost immediately took off in the direction of the kestrel.\u00a0 In flight the hawk is slower and less agile than the falcon of course and the last thing I remember is the Red-tail flying away, screaming in apparent frustration (and embarrassment?)\u00a0as it did so, with the kestrel in hot pursuit.<\/p>\n

As I’ve noted many times before, kestrels are gutsy little falcons!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Yesterday I photographed an attack by an American Kestrel on an adult Red-tailed Hawk. What made it unusual was the fact that the hawk didn’t see the kestrel coming, so its reaction to being thumped on the head was, well… amusing.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20960,"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":[340,334,450],"tags":[28,1405,1799,490,452,68,131,451,1800,1801,1798],"class_list":["post-20952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-american-kestrel","tag-attack","tag-blindsided","tag-burst-rate","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-canon-7d","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-rotation","tag-screaming","tag-sucker-punch"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/red-tailed-hawk-9651-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5rW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20952","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=20952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}