{"id":3375,"date":"2011-12-05T15:37:18","date_gmt":"2011-12-05T22:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=3375"},"modified":"2011-12-09T12:45:02","modified_gmt":"2011-12-09T19:45:02","slug":"sometimes-the-prey-bites-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/05\/sometimes-the-prey-bites-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes the Prey Bites Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hope you’ll bear with me but this post will be more about\u00a0behavior than image quality as I just didn’t have a good light angle for this little drama.\u00a0 As I’ve said elsewhere<\/a> on this blog, one of my\u00a0primary goals is to document interesting behaviors and at times\u00a0that will take priority over the quality of the images.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Rough-legged Hawks dive on prey it can be fairly dramatic.\u00a0 Typically they hover high up over the potential\u00a0prey for a few moments, then dive fast and at a fairly steep angle.\u00a0\u00a0Occasionally they seem to hit the ground so hard that it rattles my teeth, almost making me expect them to bounce on impact.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough-legged-hawk-9167\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

This morning I watched this hawk hover, then dive.\u00a0 I think you can see from the wing position that this bird was still\u00a0traveling at a good clip and at a\u00a0fairly steep angle\u00a0when it was only a couple of feet from the ground.\u00a0 \u00a0The prey was\u00a0on a hill above me and buried in this vegetation so I didn’t see the impact.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough-legged-hawk-9181\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Often these attempts at prey are unsuccessful but this time the hawk caught a vole (along with a talon-full of debris).\u00a0\u00a0 The bird came out of the grasses directly toward me but then turned to its left to give me a side view.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough-legged-hawk-9202\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0This little vole had\u00a0a bucket-full of\u00a0attitude and didn’t want to go down without a fight.\u00a0 In the two images prior to this one (which I haven’t included here due to\u00a0poor quality)\u00a0I’m pretty sure that the vole is biting the left foot of the hawk (which was held tightly up against the body) and this image shows the reaction of the bird – to look down and back at the vole and\u00a0pull the\u00a0rodent off of its foot.\u00a0 Here we see the\u00a0voles wide open mouth and those mean little rodent incisors ready for action.<\/p>\n

I’ve often wondered how\u00a0common it is for\u00a0raptors to\u00a0“feel the pain” from their rodent prey.\u00a0 Several times in the past I’ve seen Northern Harriers drop voles after being\u00a0airborne and wondered if it had been done deliberately because they’d been bitten.\u00a0 \u00a0This hawk didn’t drop the vole but it certainly reacted to the\u00a0apparent bite.<\/p>\n

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

I hope you’ll bear with me but this post will be more about\u00a0behavior than image quality as I just didn’t have a good light angle for this little drama.\u00a0 As I’ve said elsewhere on this blog, one of my\u00a0primary goals is to document interesting behaviors and at times\u00a0that will take priority over the quality of the images.\u00a0 When Rough-legged Hawks dive on prey it can be fairly dramatic.\u00a0 Typically they hover high up over the potential\u00a0prey for a few moments, then dive fast and at a fairly steep angle.\u00a0\u00a0Occasionally they seem to hit the ground so hard that it rattles my teeth, almost making me expect them to bounce on impact.\u00a0   \u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc This morning I watched this hawk hover, then dive.\u00a0 I think you can see from the wing position that this bird was still\u00a0traveling at a good clip and at a\u00a0fairly steep angle\u00a0when it was only a couple of feet from the ground.\u00a0 \u00a0The prey was\u00a0on a hill above me and buried in this vegetation so I didn’t see the impact.\u00a0     \u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc \u00a0Often these attempts at prey are unsuccessful but this time the hawk caught a vole (along with a talon-full of debris).\u00a0\u00a0 The bird came out of the grasses directly toward me but then turned to its left to give me a side view.     1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc \u00a0This little vole had\u00a0a bucket-full of\u00a0attitude and didn’t want to go down…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,334,337,392,358],"tags":[556,534,173,558,256,269,557,315],"class_list":["post-3375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-diurnal-raptors","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-rough-legged-hawks","tag-bite","tag-buteo-lagopus","tag-hawk","tag-incisor","tag-prey","tag-rough-legged-hawk","tag-teeth","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Sr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3375","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=3375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}