{"id":37600,"date":"2016-02-20T06:19:22","date_gmt":"2016-02-20T13:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=37600"},"modified":"2016-02-20T11:22:56","modified_gmt":"2016-02-20T18:22:56","slug":"prairie-falcon-in-flight-with-a-duck-in-its-talons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/20\/prairie-falcon-in-flight-with-a-duck-in-its-talons\/","title":{"rendered":"Prairie Falcon In Flight With A Duck In Its Talons"},"content":{"rendered":"

For some time I’ve been threatening to post a few older photos that I’ve posted before because it’s been so long that many current blog\u00a0followers have never seen them. This first image is one of them.<\/p>\n

I was just leaving Antelope Island on a cold and windy December day after a disappointing morning of attempting to photograph birds (they were all hunkered down in the wind)\u00a0when I encountered this\u00a0young Prairie Falcon feeding on what I believe is a Shoveler near the marina. Almost immediately a pair of harassing ravens forced the falcon into the air with its partially eaten prey.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D,<\/strong> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I was able to get off a couple of sharp shots as the\u00a0bird headed east along the causeway and this is my favorite of the two. The falcon then\u00a0crossed the causeway road in front of me and was immediately attacked by a marauding adult Bald Eagle. Under normal circumstances the falcon could easily out-maneuver the eagle but dragging this heavy load made it vulnerable so it dropped the duck onto the ice where the eagle retrieved it and flew off. Naturally, all that occurred on the wrong side of my\u00a0pickup for me to get any shots of it.<\/p>\n

The plane of the falcon’s body is tipped a little because of the heavy load it’s hauling. The dark gray background at bottom is the “angry” Great Salt Lake – it often looks like this in windy and stormy conditions\u00a0and the vague white blobs in the water are out of focus whitecaps. The duck’s feathers\u00a0have\u00a0granular ice and snow pellets stuck to them.<\/p>\n

Whether by accident or by design I think it’s interesting that the falcon has grasped the duck in\u00a0the way that it’s most streamlined going through the air – reminds me just a little of how an Osprey carries a fish in flight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

This photo, taken about a month earlier, is of the same falcon. I know that because of the broken feather on the right wing, though it can’t be seen in the first\u00a0photo above. This image was taken right\u00a0at dawn just as the light hit the bird but hadn’t yet reached the perch. I don’t have the techs for this shot easily available but I know it was taken at a\u00a0high ISO setting.<\/p>\n

I’ve had very few opportunities with Prairie Falcons this winter and that’s at least partly due to the receding Great Salt Lake. With very little water near the causeway road there’s also relatively few ducks there\u00a0for falcons to prey on so they generally stay too far out for the reach of my lens. I did get close to a Prairie Falcon yesterday morning but that was at Farmington and the bird\u00a0was perched\u00a0on an ugly\u00a0power pole in poor light.<\/p>\n

Rest easy, I won’t be posting any of those<\/em> shots.<\/p>\n

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

I was just leaving Antelope Island when I encountered this young Prairie Falcon feeding on what I believe is a Shoveler near the marina. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37601,"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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,334,371],"tags":[493,113,538,146,160,254,256,2111,311],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/prairie-falcon-2654-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9Ms","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37600"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}