{"id":34330,"date":"2015-09-28T06:27:22","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T12:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=34330"},"modified":"2015-09-28T13:46:37","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T19:46:37","slug":"juvenile-and-adult-swainsons-hawks-a-feeding-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/28\/juvenile-and-adult-swainsons-hawks-a-feeding-session\/","title":{"rendered":"Juvenile and Adult Swainson’s Hawks – A Feeding Session"},"content":{"rendered":"

Things got a little frenzied when one of the adult Swainson’s Hawks would bring a vole in to feed their juvenile offspring.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

This is one of two siblings I photographed earlier this month near Monida, Montana. The young birds could fly but they weren’t yet hunting on their own so they would wait on a variety of nearby perches for their parents to bring in voles. The wait was often a long one so in the interim\u00a0this youngster felt the need for a wing stretch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

It was sort of double stretch (it did it twice without completely folding its wings in-between) and toward the end of the second one it spotted a parent coming in with a vole while it was still far across the valley. This is their typical reaction to food – screaming. The\u00a0injured\u00a0sibling (an apparent broken\u00a0upper leg)\u00a0of this youngster was perched some distance away but it typically only took a few moments for either\u00a0of them to fly in and compete for the meal so the reaction of both young birds to food\u00a0could be\u00a0pretty intense.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

This is the parent bringing in the vole. Based on the catch light I can see in both eyes of the vole when I crop tightly on this image I’m pretty sure that at this\u00a0point the vole was still alive.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

The adult passed the juvenile on the fence post and landed on another post to my right..<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

where it instantly (it hadn’t even completely folded its wings yet after landing)\u00a0killed the vole…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

and then looked back at the nearby youngster that was already coming in for the meal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

Knowing that the juveniles were still awkward and clumsy in flight (and landing) the adult pinned the vole to the top of the post for as long as possible…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

before taking off at the last second and leaving the vole behind.\u00a0As it landed the\u00a0juvenile made an attempt at snagging the vole with one of its talons but…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

instead it knocked the vole to the ground.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

The young bird knew exactly where it fell…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

and\u00a0dived straight down to retrieve it.<\/p>\n

At this point I lost focus on the juvenile in the tall grasses at the base of the post but it was obvious that it enjoyed the meal. I deleted all images after this one and I can’t remember if the other youngster came in to compete for this vole or not.<\/p>\n

I posted one of these images (the 7th) on the road\u00a0while I was still on my camping trip and at that\u00a0time I promised to post more of the series at a later date when I had better internet access. This is that post.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Addendum:<\/strong> I’m adding\u00a0these two versions of a couple of these images in response to the second comment from Dave Sparks, below. The red\u00a0square is my active focus point for each shot.\u00a0It shows that part of the reason the adult bird in image 1031 is\u00a0noticeably softer than it is in image 1032 might be because the active focus point was on the juvenile’s right wing in the first image and that wing was closer to me in the first image than its head was in the second image (where the active focus point was for that shot). <\/em><\/p>\n

In other words, the adult bird was further behind my point of focus in the first image than it was in the second and that likely accounts for some of the discrepancy in sharpness of the adult (the bird on the right). Keep in mind that my depth of field at this effective focal length of 1120 mm is extremely shallow.<\/em><\/p>\n

Both images below are full frame (uncropped).<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Image 1031, active focus point in red<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Image 1032, active focus point in red<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Things got a little frenzied when one of the adult Swainson’s Hawks would bring a vole in to feed their juvenile offspring.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34335,"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":[334,392,1493,645],"tags":[24,647,136,190,2049,220,256,297,646,315],"class_list":["post-34330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-adult","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-feeding","tag-juvenile","tag-monida","tag-montana-2","tag-prey","tag-stretch","tag-swainsons-hawk","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/swainsons-hawk-0992-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8VI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34330","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=34330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}