{"id":29706,"date":"2015-02-22T06:34:29","date_gmt":"2015-02-22T13:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=29706"},"modified":"2015-02-22T06:34:29","modified_gmt":"2015-02-22T13:34:29","slug":"pellet-casting-stretching-swainsons-hawk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/22\/pellet-casting-stretching-swainsons-hawk\/","title":{"rendered":"Pellet Casting, Stretching Swainson’s Hawk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several summers ago this juvenile Swainson’s Hawk in southwest Montana\u00a0allowed me to photograph it performing\u00a0some interesting behaviors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's\u00a01\/\/1600, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

It would hunt voles and grasshoppers from fence posts next to the road and seemed barely aware of my presence as it did so. Sometimes it would land on a post within just a few feet of my pickup.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

After it landed on this\u00a0more distant post\u00a0the bird started hacking and eventually\u00a0cast two pellets – this is one of them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Soon it turned on its perch and stretched – an almost sure sign of imminent take-off so I was ready…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/\/1000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

and was able to capture several images of the hawk in flight soon after it launched.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

After the bird left I retrieved the still wet pellets it had just cast for\u00a0inspection.\u00a0For much of the year Swainson’s Hawks primarily eat grasshoppers but during the breeding season and soon after they mostly\u00a0consume rodents.\u00a0These pellets were composed of mammal fur with a few small bones so I suspect this bird was eating voles almost exclusively. I thought it was interesting how the pellet on the right actually resembles a vole, including a beady black eye and tail…<\/p>\n

Swainson’s Hawks migrate to South America for the winter so of course I haven’t seen any for months but a friend in\u00a0Arizona reported seeing an adult light morph near Tucson\u00a0at the beginning of\u00a0this month (about 4 weeks early).<\/p>\n

It seems that even Swainson’s Hawks may be confused by this crazy warm weather we’ve been having here in the west.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Several summers ago this juvenile Swainson’s Hawk in southwest Montana allowed me to photograph it performing some interesting behaviors.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29713,"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":[334,1493,645],"tags":[647,555,146,190,220,245,2427,297,646,316],"class_list":["post-29706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-centennial-valley","tag-flight","tag-juvenile","tag-montana-2","tag-pellet","tag-rodents","tag-stretch","tag-swainsons-hawk","tag-voles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/swainsons-hawk-4116b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7J8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29706","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=29706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}