{"id":25088,"date":"2014-07-14T05:35:19","date_gmt":"2014-07-14T11:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=25088"},"modified":"2014-07-14T05:35:19","modified_gmt":"2014-07-14T11:35:19","slug":"ferruginous-hawks-strange-behavior-with-nesting-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/14\/ferruginous-hawks-strange-behavior-with-nesting-material\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferruginous Hawks – Strange Behavior With Nesting Material"},"content":{"rendered":"

On our recent camping\/photo trip to southwest Montana I observed and photographed\u00a0a Ferruginous Hawk behavior that has me baffled.<\/p>\n

Note: These are meant\u00a0as documentary images only.\u00a0 The power pole setting\u00a0is an ugly one with wires everywhere and there were clouds behind me so the birds kept going into and out of shade.\u00a0 To add to my woes, for one series of shots the white balance on my Canon 7D\u00a0went a little wonky for some unknown reason (both of my 7D’s have done that a couple of times over the years).<\/em><\/p>\n

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It was early morning on June 29 at\u00a0the west end of the Centennial Valley when we spotted this Ferruginous Hawk perched on a power pole.\u00a0 As many of you know I’m not fond of this type of setting but I stopped and watched the bird for a while, thinking I might get lucky with some take-off shots.<\/p>\n

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Suddenly and very unexpectedly another Ferrug carrying nesting material\u00a0landed next to the first one.\u00a0 The bird on the right was noticeably\u00a0the larger of the two so I believe it to be the female of a mated pair.<\/p>\n

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The male on the left fiddled and fussed with the nesting material for about 4 minutes but the female didn’t seem to be\u00a0particularly interested…<\/p>\n

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and eventually\u00a0the male dropped the nesting material, which to my eye looks to be a dead sagebrush branch.<\/p>\n

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Then he flew off and I thought he was gone for good.\u00a0\u00a0But he fooled me…<\/p>\n

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and returned with more nesting material.<\/p>\n

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This time he “played” with the stick for about two minutes, manipulating it in his beak and talons and even jumping into the air with it several times.<\/p>\n

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And then he leaned over the pole crossbeam and seemed to intentionally and very deliberately…<\/p>\n

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drop it to the ground.<\/p>\n

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About two minutes later he took off…<\/p>\n

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for an unknown destination and didn’t soon return so I drove up the road looking for other opportunities.<\/p>\n

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A short distance away and perhaps 3\/4 of a mile from the pole the two hawks were on is this nest of another pair of Ferruginous Hawks.\u00a0 It had 3 youngsters on the nest\u00a0(only 2 can clearly be seen here) in the\u00a0tree on the left and one of the\u00a0parents can be seen in the tree to the right.\u00a0 This image was taken almost immediately after the previous ones so I’m\u00a0nearly positive that the two hawks on the pole were not associated with this nest.<\/p>\n

Thoughts like these keep running through my mind:<\/p>\n