{"id":24157,"date":"2014-06-01T06:42:39","date_gmt":"2014-06-01T12:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=24157"},"modified":"2014-06-01T08:23:32","modified_gmt":"2014-06-01T14:23:32","slug":"mating-swainsons-hawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/01\/mating-swainsons-hawks\/","title":{"rendered":"Mating Swainson’s Hawks"},"content":{"rendered":"

We returned home yesterday afternoon from a camping\/photo trip to southwestern Montana.\u00a0\u00a0Even though we were forced to return a few days earlier than we had planned because of bad weather\u00a0we still\u00a0had a grand time in beautiful country as\u00a0we explored the back (dirt) roads looking for birds and adventure.\u00a0 We were rewarded on both counts.<\/p>\n

Two days ago as I was photographing this dark morph Swainson’s Hawk on a power pole something completely unexpected happened and this time I was ready for it – the early morning light angle was good, I had the right focal length (no teleconverter attached) to capture the action without clipping anything and the bird was facing me.\u00a0 True, I didn’t get\u00a0light in the eye in any of the action images and\u00a0the perch is ugly but the behavior is well\u00a0documented.\u00a0 I’ll take that trade-off.<\/p>\n

Most shots in this post were taken at or near 1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM.\u00a0 I was shooting at an awkward angle so image rotation was a problem.\u00a0 I had to choose between making the pole vertical or the cross-beam horizontal.\u00a0 I chose the latter.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"swainson's<\/p>\n

Because of the unattractive perch I had removed my teleconverter in anticipation of take-off and at this point I was mostly just watching the bird through my lens.\u00a0\u00a0As usual I was shooting from my pickup\u00a0so I was lucky that my peripheral vision picked up some unexpected movement through my upper windshield.<\/p>\n

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\"swainson's<\/p>\n

It was another raptor flying toward the dark Swainson’s.\u00a0 At first I didn’t know what species it was or what was about to happen so I just fired away\u00a0and hoped\u00a0for the best.\u00a0 It turned out to be another Swainson’s Hawk, this time an intermediate morph and it landed…<\/p>\n

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\"swainson's<\/p>\n

on the pole cross-beams\u00a0near the dark morph.<\/p>\n

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\"swainson's<\/p>\n

Almost immediately the newly arrived hawk performed a near-dance move to…<\/p>\n

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\"swainson's<\/p>\n

approach the darker bird.\u00a0 Because of the head-down, seemingly submissive and inviting posture of the hawk on the right I suspected at this point that they were a\u00a0mated pair and that the dark morph was the female.<\/p>\n

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\"swainson's<\/p>\n

The male very quickly mounted the female.\u00a0 Here we get a good look at some of the plumage differences between the intermediate and dark morphs.<\/p>\n

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\"swainson's<\/p>\n

As per usual, copulation was a balancing act for both birds.\u00a0 Here the female\u00a0was knocked\u00a0off-balance and used her left wing on the perch\u00a0for support as the male attempted to gain his balance on her back.<\/p>\n

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\"swainson's<\/p>\n

For a moment I thought he might fall off…<\/p>\n

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\"swainson's<\/p>\n

but both birds recovered enough to continue.<\/p>\n

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\"swainson's<\/p>\n

The tail of the female is raised high and far to the side to allow the male access to her cloaca.\u00a0 Notice the flying down feathers dislodged by the activity, a dark one to the right and a white one by the upper part of the pole.<\/p>\n

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\"swainson's<\/p>\n

It is approximately at this point that the “cloacal kiss” and transfer of sperm occurs. It happened very quickly…<\/p>\n

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\"swainson's<\/p>\n

and just as quickly the male hopped off his precarious perch.<\/p>\n

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\"swainson's<\/p>\n

Both birds assumed these interesting poses for a moment…<\/p>\n

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\"swainson's<\/p>\n

and then faced each other in what appeared to be a “soulful” look after sex (it’s difficult for me to completely avoid anthropomorphism with behaviors like this…).<\/p>\n

At this point both birds began an extended preening session and I moved on down the dirt road.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's<\/p>\n

I do have a concern for the female.\u00a0 I passed this power pole many times on this trip and she was often on the same perch so I saw her quite a few times over several days.\u00a0 She often kept her right eye closed.\u00a0 It didn’t seem to matter whether or not that eye was facing the sun or what she was doing – the eye was closed more than it was open.<\/p>\n

I suspect an eye injury but when the eye was open it appeared to be normal, she was able to fly and she had an attentive mate so if the eye was injured I have high hopes for her quick recovery.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note- I plan on returning to this area several times over the summer and fall and I’ll admit to some curiosity about the genetics of Swainson’s Hawks – what color morphs will their youngsters be?\u00a0 I’ll be watching for them!<\/em><\/p>\n

Also, if anyone knows how to get ahold of Patty Chadwick\u00a0other than by email please let me know.\u00a0 At her request I’ve been\u00a0emailing her links to my blog posts because of issues\u00a0she has with her “evil iPad”\u00a0but all three times I’ve tried to do that this morning the emails have been returned as undeliverable.\u00a0 I suspect her inbox might be full and she doesn’t yet know it.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Two days ago as I was photographing this dark morph Swainson’s Hawk on a power pole something completely unexpected happened and this time I was ready for it.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24163,"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":[334,1493,391,360,645],"tags":[935,1019,477,969,1716,137,1605,211,220,2030,646,453],"class_list":["post-24157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-anthropomorphism","tag-cloaca","tag-cloacal-kiss","tag-dark-morph","tag-eye-injury","tag-female","tag-intermediate-morph","tag-male","tag-montana-2","tag-submissive-posture","tag-swainsons-hawk","tag-teleconverter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/swainsons-hawk-5613-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6hD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24157","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=24157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}