{"id":32092,"date":"2015-06-18T04:43:48","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T10:43:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=32092"},"modified":"2015-06-18T20:14:13","modified_gmt":"2015-06-19T02:14:13","slug":"blackbirds-mobbing-hawks-on-the-nest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/18\/blackbirds-mobbing-hawks-on-the-nest\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackbirds Mobbing Hawks On The Nest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I photographed Brewer’s Blackbirds as they\u00a0relentlessly mobbed a family of Red-tailed Hawks on a nest in Montana.<\/p>\n

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

The attacks were persistent and intense. At times the blackbirds seemed to line up in the air to get at the female hawk and her three chicks (her mate was seldom on the nest).<\/p>\n

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

The blackbirds ignored the chicks when no adult was present but they were instantly on either parent when they returned to the nest. In this shot the female had just landed with a twig in her beak but the blackbirds had followed her in and one of them…<\/p>\n

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

struck her on the rump.<\/p>\n

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

As that bird left the scene its companion came in and actually…<\/p>\n

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

landed on her. It stayed there long enough for me to get 6 shots before it left but I like this one because it reminds me of\u00a0a Plains Indian warrior\u00a0counting coup on an enemy.<\/p>\n

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

When one of the adults returned to the nest, blackbirds would invariably follow it in. Here the female is bringing in a vole.<\/p>\n

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

Incredibly one of the blackbirds actually rode on her back as she landed (I didn’t have enough shutter speed to get the little bird sharp). In the next shot in the burst the blackbird is apparently still there but it can’t be seen because the wings of the hawk are up.<\/p>\n

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

In this last series of four shots the female hawk is delicately tearing up a vole and feeding it\u00a0to the chicks but this opportunistic blackbird senses a chance for intimidation.<\/p>\n

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

It landed on her back which made the female hawk…<\/p>\n

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

look up for an instant but when she resumed feeding the chicks…<\/p>\n

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

the blackbird added insult to injury by audaciously walking further up her back.<\/p>\n

Larger raptors are simply not fast enough to catch small birds (in most cases) and these blackbirds instinctively know that and take advantage of the situation. Brewer’s Blackbirds are communal nesters and I suspect they were nesting in the area, saw the adult hawks as threats, and acted accordingly.<\/p>\n

Normally when I see natural behaviors like this between native species I’m just an unbiased observer but I must admit that after watching the blackbirds torment the hawks at their nest for so long I eventually found myself hoping that one of the hawks would reach up,\u00a0grab a blackbird out of the air and in a flurry\u00a0of flying feathers crank its little head off.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Last week I photographed Brewer’s Blackbirds as they relentlessly mobbed a family of Red-tailed Hawks on a nest in Montana.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32101,"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":[334,1965,394,1493,391,450],"tags":[1966,740,1967,440,220,228,451,315],"class_list":["post-32092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-brewers-blackbirds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-brewers-blackbird","tag-chicks","tag-euphagus-cyanocephalus","tag-mobbing","tag-montana-2","tag-nest","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/red-tailed-hawk-1614-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8lC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32092","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=32092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}