{"id":25060,"date":"2014-07-12T06:10:51","date_gmt":"2014-07-12T12:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=25060"},"modified":"2014-07-12T06:21:20","modified_gmt":"2014-07-12T12:21:20","slug":"dark-morph-swainsons-hawk-taking-off-from-a-hilltop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/12\/dark-morph-swainsons-hawk-taking-off-from-a-hilltop\/","title":{"rendered":"Dark Morph Swainson’s Hawk Taking Off From A Hilltop"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the mornings when we leave Montana’s Centennial Valley the 27 miles of dirt road until we hit pavement are always a\u00a0little depressing because\u00a0we’re so reluctant to leave that wonderful place.\u00a0 But occasionally our melancholy is assuaged and our\u00a0spirits lifted by birds and other wildlife we see on the way out.\u00a0 Such was the case on the morning of July 3 when I photographed the\u00a0attack of the Swainson’s Hawk on the Red-tailed Hawk <\/a>and this dark morph Swainson’s\u00a0Hawk taking off from a hilltop just before we reached the freeway and “civilization”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

When we spotted the hawk it was on the ground and partially obscured by sagebrush and grasses so I suspect it had made an attempt at prey.\u00a0 It apparently wanted to use the slope of the hill as an aid in take-off which was to our advantage because that meant it launched in our general direction rather than away from us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I was pulling the camping\u00a0trailer and the hawk was on the right side of the road so I had to get out of my pickup and brace my 500mm lens on the open door which is far from ideal long-lens technique.\u00a0 I fired off a couple of bursts as it took off but only a few of the shots were reasonably sharp and not clipped.\u00a0 In this image I wish I had more room at the bottom because there were some blue flowers down there that would have looked nice in the background.<\/p>\n

The Centennial Valley is usually raptor-heaven but\u00a0most species have\u00a0been alarmingly scarce these last two trips.\u00a0 Red-tailed\u00a0Hawks and Bald Eagles\u00a0seem to be\u00a0present in reasonable concentrations but Swainson’s Hawks, Ferruginous Hawks, Prairie Falcons, Peregrine Falcons and even American Kestrels seem to be noticeably reduced in numbers\u00a0this\u00a0summer.\u00a0 I hope it’s a temporary phenomenon or that my anecdotal observations and “conclusions” are inaccurate but I’ve noticed the same trend here at home in Utah.<\/p>\n

And I don’t like it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

On the mornings when we leave Montana’s Centennial Valley the 27 miles of dirt road until we hit pavement are always a little depressing because we’re so reluctant to leave that wonderful place. But occasionally our melancholy is assuaged and our spirits lifted by birds and other wildlife we see on the way out.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25061,"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":[334,1493,360,645],"tags":[647,555,969,146,220,2098,646],"class_list":["post-25060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-centennial-valley","tag-dark-morph","tag-flight","tag-montana-2","tag-reduced-raptor-numbers","tag-swainsons-hawk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/swainsons-hawk-3368-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6wc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25060","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=25060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}