{"id":24297,"date":"2014-06-07T05:48:12","date_gmt":"2014-06-07T11:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=24297"},"modified":"2014-06-07T05:48:12","modified_gmt":"2014-06-07T11:48:12","slug":"two-recent-swainsons-hawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/07\/two-recent-swainsons-hawks\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Recent Swainson’s Hawks"},"content":{"rendered":"

So far this year Swainson’s Hawk populations seem to be a little spotty.\u00a0 I’m finding them in normal concentrations in some areas but in others where there’s been good numbers of them in the past they seem to be rare or nonexistent.\u00a0 I’m not really alarmed about it, rather I suspect this is just one more example of localized bird numbers being difficult to predict.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I encountered this light morph Swainson’s two days ago in the Heber Valley as it foraged for food (grasshoppers most likely) in a pasture of lush grass and spent dandelions.\u00a0 I was able to get some shots of it in the grass but I was much too close for take-off shots with my 500mm prime lens even with teleconverter removed so I quickly grabbed my second 7D with the 100-400 zoom lens.\u00a0 I focused, fired a test shot for exposure, adjusted that exposure (all of which took about 3 seconds) and a millisecond before I was able to refocus the bird launched so I missed those shots.<\/p>\n

Birds seem to have a knack for doing something interesting at the most inopportune times!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It landed on a nearby pole so once again I set up for take-off and this time it worked out.\u00a0 Even though the perch isn’t ideal I cropped this way to leave it in since the hawk has obviously just taken off from somethin<\/em>g that the eye begs to see (besides, there’s a lot of blue sky in this image as it is…).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Unfortunately the bird launched mostly in my direction which generally provides less\u00a0appealing images as it often doesn’t take the best advantage of light, even at this early hour of the morning.\u00a0\u00a0 The\u00a0appeal of head-on flight shots is in the eye of the beholder but\u00a0I tend to like them for the variety they provide and the good look at both eyes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The wing position in the\u00a0next shot in the burst provided some light on the dorsal surface of the left wing and back.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Since the subject of this post is Swainson’s Hawks, despite their poor quality\u00a0I couldn’t resist including the following two images.\u00a0 They were taken at mid-day with the sun slightly behind the bird so I’d normally have scrapped both images but they revealed something interesting about the hawk so I kept them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

This bird greeted us early last week as we topped Monida hill overlooking Montana’s Centennial Valley, which we took as a\u00a0promising omen for our trip since one of our primary goals was to photograph raptors.\u00a0\u00a0Even through the viewfinder as I was snapping the shots\u00a0I was struck by the huge size of its\u00a0bulging crop.<\/p>\n

I realize that judging such a feature in a photo can be misleading depending on light and perspective…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

but I saved 15 images of this bird in flight at varying\u00a0heights and angles and each of them shows the same thing – a hugely distended crop.<\/p>\n

The last meal of this hawk must have been a doozy!<\/p>\n

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

So far this year Swainson’s Hawk populations seem to be a little spotty. I’m finding them in normal concentrations in some areas but in others where there’s been good numbers of them in the past they seem to be rare or nonexistent. I’m not really alarmed about it, rather I suspect this is just one more example of localized bird numbers being difficult to predict.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24303,"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],"tags":[586,647,555,2048,1472,2049,220,646],"class_list":["post-24297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","tag-bulging-crop","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-centennial-valley","tag-heber-valley","tag-light-morph","tag-monida","tag-montana-2","tag-swainsons-hawk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/swainsons-hawk-6890-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6jT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24297","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=24297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}