{"id":28413,"date":"2014-12-15T16:56:49","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T23:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=28413"},"modified":"2014-12-15T16:56:49","modified_gmt":"2014-12-15T23:56:49","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-and-the-demise-of-a-vole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/15\/red-tailed-hawk-and-the-demise-of-a-vole\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk And The Demise Of A Vole"},"content":{"rendered":"

This juvenile Red-tailed Hawk had a fine, furry, Farmington\u00a0feast for breakfast this morning.<\/p>\n

Many of these images are only of documentary quality but I do think they help to tell the story.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I first noticed the bird on top of a power pole and wondered if it was perch-hunting from there.\u00a0 It was.\u00a0 It soon flew off and landed in the vegetation and I could tell by its speed and approach angle that it was after prey, most likely a vole.\u00a0 But at this point I didn’t know for sure if it had caught anything.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0But soon after the hawk took off it became apparent that…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0the food foray was a success.\u00a0 It had a vole in its talons.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

With all four talons buried deeply in the vole there was no chance that the little guy was going to bite or get away (and you knew I was going to clip a wing, didn’t you?…)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The hawk flew to a power pole to enjoy its meal.\u00a0 It rejected a few of the innards, ate some of them, and then swallowed the bulk of the vole in one gulp.\u00a0 Then after resting and stretching\u00a0for a few minutes…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

the bird flew off, partly away from me of course.<\/p>\n

I’m relieved that we seem to have healthy populations of voles again after several years in some local areas where these naturally cyclic rodents were few and far between.\u00a0 Our wintering raptors are going to need them.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

This juvenile Red-tailed Hawk had a fine, furry, Farmington feast for breakfast this morning.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28416,"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":[334,392,450],"tags":[452,1045,146,256,451,311,315],"class_list":["post-28413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-farmington","tag-flight","tag-prey","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-utah-2","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/red-tailed-hawk-5910-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7oh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28413","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=28413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}