{"id":27138,"date":"2014-10-10T04:00:18","date_gmt":"2014-10-10T10:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=27138"},"modified":"2014-10-09T07:02:42","modified_gmt":"2014-10-09T13:02:42","slug":"northern-harrier-playing-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/10\/northern-harrier-playing-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Harrier “Playing”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Play has been well documented in some bird species and I believe I photographed that behavior in a Northern Harrier this week.\u00a0 This bird was too far away for quality images but I think the behavior is well documented in the photographs.<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

I first spotted this\u00a0hawk on an ugly metal fence post but\u00a0as soon as I stopped my pickup to watch it through my lens the wary bird took off.\u00a0 Almost immediately it performed a spectacular and classic harrier mid-air maneuver by changing directions and pouncing on something in the grasses.\u00a0 I\u00a0presumed it to be a vole.<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

For about two minutes the bird continually struggled, wrestled and pounced on something I couldn’t see.<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

The activity was quite frenetic and I took many photos of it.\u00a0 As I watched through my lens I wondered if the harrier was trying to avoid being bitten by a vole or even a larger rodent.<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

Eventually the harrier took off with its “prey”, which turned out to be dried cow poop.\u00a0 Cow pies are common in this area because refuge managers run cattle there in the summer in an attempt to control invasive phragmites (personally I’m not a fan of cattle on public lands but that’s another story…).<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

The harrier carried the cow pie only a few feet…<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

before dropping it.\u00a0 Whether that was done deliberately or not I don’t know but I suspect that it was because in the image just before this one (just as the pie leaves the foot) the talons on that foot are widely spread, as you’d\u00a0 expect if the drop was deliberate.<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

Then the bird performed another one of those impressive mid-air maneuvers as it changed direction in flight and once again landed on the same\u00a0cow pie.<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

The hawk\u00a0then repeatedly pounced\u00a0on the pie for perhaps another minute before…<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

flying off and…<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

doing the same thing to another apparent cow pie (I believe that’s what I see beneath the bird and in front of the greenery).\u00a0 When it eventually tired of this activity it lifted off and…<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

very deliberately harassed this male Ring-necked Pheasant by flying within inches of its head as it passed by.\u00a0 I missed that shot because I hadn’t seen the pheasant so I wasn’t quick enough with my shutter finger.\u00a0 But the harrier landed very\u00a0close by, almost in intimidation of the pheasant.\u00a0 I had the definite impression that this hawk was feeling frisky.<\/p>\n

Northern Harriers playing with inanimate objects, corncobs in particular, has been well documented.\u00a0 This is at least the second time I’ve seen them playing with cow pies at Farmington.\u00a0 What fun, for me and apparently also for the harrier.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0 I’m “on the road again”, camping and photographing in southern Utah.\u00a0 As usual I’ll be without computer access so I’ll likely be mostly incommunicado for the duration, though intermittent cell phone\u00a0access should allow me to read any comments that may be made (which I enjoy).\u00a0 I’ve scheduled posts to be published in my absence.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

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

Play has been well documented in some bird species and I believe I photographed that behavior in a Northern Harrier this week.\u00a0 This bird was too far away for quality images but I think the behavior is well documented in the photographs.   I first spotted this\u00a0hawk on an ugly metal fence post but\u00a0as soon as I stopped my pickup to watch it through my lens the wary bird took off.\u00a0 Almost immediately it performed a spectacular and classic harrier mid-air maneuver by changing directions and pouncing on something in the grasses.\u00a0 I\u00a0presumed it to be a vole.     For about two minutes the bird continually struggled, wrestled and pounced on something I couldn’t see.     The activity was quite frenetic and I took many photos of it.\u00a0 As I watched through my lens I wondered if the harrier was trying to avoid being bitten by a vole or even a larger rodent.     Eventually the harrier took off with its “prey”, which turned out to be dried cow poop.\u00a0 Cow pies are common in this area because refuge managers run cattle there in the summer in an attempt to control invasive phragmites (personally I’m not a fan of cattle on public lands but that’s another story…).     The harrier carried the cow pie only a few feet…     before dropping it.\u00a0 Whether that was done deliberately or not I don’t know but I suspect that it was because in the image just before this one (just as the pie…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27148,"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":[334,395,341],"tags":[50,86,2265,1659,1008,234,250,999,560],"class_list":["post-27138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-northern-harriers","tag-behavior","tag-circus-cyaneus","tag-cow-pie","tag-cows","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-northern-harrier","tag-phragmites","tag-play","tag-ring-necked-pheasant"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/northern-harrier-8630-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-73I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27138","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=27138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}