{"id":22706,"date":"2014-03-18T05:18:18","date_gmt":"2014-03-18T11:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=22706"},"modified":"2014-03-18T05:48:39","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T11:48:39","slug":"a-surprise-peregrine-falcon-and-my-resulting-buck-fever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/18\/a-surprise-peregrine-falcon-and-my-resulting-buck-fever\/","title":{"rendered":"A Surprise Peregrine Falcon And My Resulting Buck Fever"},"content":{"rendered":"

If anything will get my adrenalin\u00a0gushing it’s a wild\u00a0Peregrine Falcon, especially if the encounter is unexpected and I make a rookie mistake.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"peregrine<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4 II, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Friday evening of last week we were on\u00a0 our way to photograph the Sandhill Cranes in Wayne County of southern Utah when we found this Peregrine Falcon feeding on a female Cinnamon Teal on a rural,\u00a0paved road.\u00a0 My guess is that the duck isn’t road kill – what traffic there was on this road was almost entirely very slow farm equipment so it may very well be that\u00a0the falcon killed the duck in the air and it just happened to fall on the road (there are marshes nearby).\u00a0 As I approached in my pickup the falcon flew off but it hung around in the general area as it flew in the stiff wind.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4 II, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It’s been years since a bird gave me buck fever but this one certainly did.\u00a0\u00a0This is only the second good opportunity I’ve ever had with a wild Peregrine and because of inexperience I blew the first one and I didn’t want to repeat that dismal performance.\u00a0 But even flying into the wind this falcon was\u00a0often fast and erratic and I was having a terrible time locking focus.\u00a0\u00a0 My heart was pounding and I was frustrated by camera angles I couldn’t negotiate through my pickup window and sometime during the pandemonium I apparently pushed a camera button combination that changed my focus points from “single point” to “auto select 19 point”.\u00a0 Now all those active\u00a0focus points were bouncing all over my viewfinder and I was going nuts in frustration!<\/p>\n

I spent a few minutes trying to fix the problem but couldn’t figure out what was going on fast enough.\u00a0\u00a0Thankfully I thought of swapping cameras by attaching my backup 7D (with the correct settings) to my 500 mm lens.\u00a0 With that combination I was able to get a few shots I like and this is one of them.\u00a0 The bird has duck blood on its tail and feet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4 II, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It was\u00a0late enough in the evening that the sun was low enough to give me pretty good light under the wings when the bird banked\u00a0for this shot.\u00a0 At this point we became concerned that we might be keeping the falcon off its meal so we left to photograph the cranes.\u00a0 When we returned at dusk\u00a0both\u00a0the falcon and the duck were\u00a0nowhere to be seen so I assume the Peregrine ate what it could and flew off with the rest.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t believe my luck, both good and bad.\u00a0 My previous experience with a\u00a0Peregrine had ended in frustration – although\u00a0that falcon repeatedly buzzed a plastic Great Horned Owl at Farmington I didn’t get a single sharp shot because of my inexperience\u00a0with a new lens and lack of skills.\u00a0 And now, almost 7 years later, I make a mistake that I’d never made before with another wild\u00a0Peregrine!\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, I had a few choice words…<\/p>\n

On the other hand I did get a few shots that I like and I’m delighted about that.<\/p>\n

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

If anything will get my adrenalin gushing it’s a wild Peregrine Falcon, especially if the encounter is unexpected and I make a rookie mistake.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22711,"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":[334,582],"tags":[1911,998,68,84,583,541,256,1910,311,1909],"class_list":["post-22706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-peregrine-falcons","tag-autoselect-19-point-autofocus","tag-buck-fever","tag-canon-7d","tag-cinnamon-teal","tag-falco-peregrinus","tag-peregrine-falcon","tag-prey","tag-single-point-autofocus","tag-utah-2","tag-wayne-county"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/peregrine-falcon-9196-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5Ue","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22706","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=22706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}