{"id":35242,"date":"2015-11-20T06:15:16","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T13:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=35242"},"modified":"2015-11-20T06:15:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T13:15:16","slug":"peregrine-falcon-on-a-duck-kill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/20\/peregrine-falcon-on-a-duck-kill\/","title":{"rendered":"Peregrine Falcon On A Duck Kill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peregrine falcons are both messy and picky eaters. I photographed this one in late December of 2011 as it worked over a duck carcass along the Antelope Island causeway. On this frigid morning the lighting conditions were abysmal so I had very little shutter speed to work with. I did my best to time my shots when the bird wasn’t moving much (with mixed success) and at f\/5.6 I had minimal depth of field so most of the shots I saved had the bird broadside to me.<\/p>\n

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\"peregrine<\/p>\n

1\/320, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The duck feathers were really flying while the falcon was plucking its prey but the feathers in the air were usually soft because of shutter speed and DOF issues. Gobs of feathers would stick\u00a0to its bill and the Peregrine had to shake its head vigorously to dislodge them. Piles of plucked feathers surround the carcass of what I believe to be a female Northern Shoveler.<\/p>\n

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\"peregrine<\/p>\n

1\/320, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I thought the gossamer appearance of these two feathers hanging from the bill was interesting.<\/p>\n

Warning: The following two images are graphic. If\u00a0such images bother you I’d\u00a0suggest that you scroll no further.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"peregrine<\/p>\n

1\/500, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because of their difficult to digest diet (high in cellulose)\u00a0many ducks have copious amounts of intestines and this finicky falcon had absolutely no interest in consuming them so it spent considerable time pulling the orange guts out of the carcass and discarding them.\u00a0Eventually they littered the frozen beach around\u00a0both birds.<\/p>\n

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\"peregrine<\/p>\n

1\/500, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

In fact the falcon spent almost as much time plucking intestines as it did eating the duck. It definitely wanted them completely removed from the carcass before continuing its meal. Notice the bulging crop of the falcon.<\/p>\n

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\"peregrine<\/p>\n

1\/500, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eventually the falcon dragged the duck behind this small hill – you can see parts of it below the frozen stump and the trail of intestines left behind on the path over which the duck was dragged. I include this image mostly for the good look at that intimidating right foot and talons.<\/p>\n

I don’t know how much of the duck was actually consumed because I left the falcon to eat in peace before it became satiated. I was freezing and needed to warm up and the light was crappy anyway.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Peregrine falcons are both messy and picky eaters.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35243,"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":[3,334,392,582],"tags":[31,113,583,2733,2735,157,2734,541,256,302],"class_list":["post-35242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-peregrine-falcons","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-duck","tag-falco-peregrinus","tag-female-northern-shoveler","tag-foot","tag-graphic","tag-intestines","tag-peregrine-falcon","tag-prey","tag-talons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/peregrine-falcon-4144-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9aq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35242","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=35242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}