{"id":29484,"date":"2015-02-11T06:10:42","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T13:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=29484"},"modified":"2015-02-11T15:26:26","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T22:26:26","slug":"female-kestrel-in-flight-and-casting-a-pellet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/female-kestrel-in-flight-and-casting-a-pellet\/","title":{"rendered":"Female Kestrel In Flight And Casting A Pellet"},"content":{"rendered":"

This female American Kestrel is the apparent mate to the male I posted two days ago. Both falcons were perched next to each other when I approached them\u00a03 days ago in Tooele\u00a0County\u00a0but the more shy male flew a few feet and hid behind the cross beams of the power pole.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 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

But his lady was stickier and stood her ground and soon a possible reason for that\u00a0became apparent (this image is out-of-order but all the rest are in sequence).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 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

She had some digestive issues to attend to before she flew off.\u00a0She worked hard at trying to hack up a pellet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 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

When it came out it was in several small pieces of varying color (in my experience kestrel pellets are usually larger than this and in a single mass).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 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

She had several difficult bouts of hacking and each time more indigestible material was expelled.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 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

She seemed to struggle most with the last little bit. Here she\u00a0protruded her tongue further than I usually see during this process.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0When it was over she quickly regained her composure and both birds flew off and as she did so…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was lucky enough to get a single flight shot that didn’t include any of the\u00a0unattractive perch.<\/p>\n

Pellet casting isn’t pretty and it can be uncomfortable, even stressful for the bird\u00a0but I’m always happy to photograph the behavior.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

This female American Kestrel is the apparent mate to the male I posted two days ago.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29490,"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":[340,334,395],"tags":[28,131,137,146,2020,1636,1357,311],"class_list":["post-29484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","tag-american-kestrel","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-female","tag-flight","tag-pellet-casting","tag-tongue","tag-tooele-county","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/american-kestrel-1875-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7Fy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29484","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=29484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}