{"id":31976,"date":"2015-06-13T05:26:38","date_gmt":"2015-06-13T11:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=31976"},"modified":"2015-06-13T05:26:38","modified_gmt":"2015-06-13T11:26:38","slug":"swainsons-hawk-casting-a-pellet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/13\/swainsons-hawk-casting-a-pellet\/","title":{"rendered":"Swainson’s Hawk Casting A Pellet"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m always fascinated by both the process and the resulting photos\u00a0of birds\u00a0ejecting pellets.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I photographed this Swainson’s Hawk yesterday morning near Monida, Montana. The bird was at an oblique angle on the side of a hill\u00a0below me and the light was contrasty so mostly I was just watching\u00a0the bird through my lens when suddenly and unexpectedly…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1250, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0it began to retch.<\/p>\n

This hawk really struggled to get the pellet out. It took so long that I took 79 shots during the retching process in my efforts to avoid missing the falling pellet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0But when the pellet finally\u00a0appeared…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

it didn’t take long for it to drop to the ground…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

and the hawk watched it all the way down.<\/p>\n

It’s very easy to miss the pellet as it falls. Sometimes I don’t even see the pellet through my lens and don’t know if one was actually ejected or\u00a0it was a “dry run” until I review my images. By the\u00a0time this pellet actually came out my buffer was beginning to fill and my burst rate slowed significantly so I was lucky to get as many images of the actual pellet as I did.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m always fascinated by both the process and the resulting photos of birds ejecting pellets.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31980,"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":[334,395,1493,645],"tags":[736,631,647,555,2049,220,245,646],"class_list":["post-31976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-aechomophorus-clarkii","tag-buffer","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-centennial-valley","tag-monida","tag-montana-2","tag-pellet","tag-swainsons-hawk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/swainsons-hawk-7804-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8jK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31976","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=31976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}