{"id":38943,"date":"2016-04-20T05:45:42","date_gmt":"2016-04-20T11:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=38943"},"modified":"2016-04-20T05:45:42","modified_gmt":"2016-04-20T11:45:42","slug":"the-swainsons-hawk-and-the-vole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/20\/the-swainsons-hawk-and-the-vole\/","title":{"rendered":"The Swainson’s Hawk And The Vole"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes even small prey doesn’t give up without a fight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I photographed this adult intermediate morph Swainson’s Hawk three days ago in northern Utah. It was hunting voles from a fence line in early morning. Typically it would take off after prey and then return to the fence posts empty-taloned but this time it was successful. I was only able to get one sharp shot as it returned with the rodent\u00a0because of\u00a0posts and poles between me and the bird. Here we see the vole and plant debris in the left\u00a0foot.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

It landed on this post and for the first while after landing it almost seemed to ignore the vole but suddenly the hawk flinched…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

and raised its wings and left foot to inspect the apparently still living\u00a0vole…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

and then actually jumped in the air as if surprised by something the vole had done. I believe the vole had actually bitten one of the hawk’s toes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

In response the hawk immediately administered the coup de gr\u00e2ce by biting down hard on the vole.<\/p>\n

Fair warning – one of the two following images is quite graphic. If you prefer to avoid that kind of image please scroll no further.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

It only took a few seconds for the hawk to consume the vole in pieces.<\/p>\n

Second warning about the following graphic image. Please, no complaints about it – you have been twice warned.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The hawk very skillfully pulled the\u00a0muscles and internal organs out of the skin as if it was pulling a sock off of a foot inside out\u00a0and then swallowed them whole. I thought it might then discard the hide of the vole but it swallowed that part separately.<\/p>\n

After the vole had been consumed the bird stayed on the post and cleaned up after its meal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 320, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

At this point I removed my teleconverter and waited for eventual takeoff but soon I could hear a large vehicle approaching fast from the east on the remote road . I figured the truck would probably spook the hawk but the problem was that the truck would pass between me and the bird. So I pre-focused on the hawk and removed\u00a0my thumb from\u00a0the focusing button (I use back button focus and didn’t want the autofocus to grab the truck) in the theory that I might get lucky and get a shot of the hawk lifting off in the split second before or after the truck passed.<\/p>\n

Here the bird is\u00a0tensely watching the loud, fast-moving truck as it approached from the left. At this point I was firing off a burst (10 images per second) in hopes of getting something interesting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 320, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the last shot I got before the truck came between me and the bird.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"damned<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 320, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM – just in case you wanted to know…<\/strong><\/p>\n

And this is the passing truck (bet you thought you’d never see\u00a0an image\u00a0like this on Feathered Photography but I couldn’t resist…). In the first image after the truck passed all I got of the hawk was a few tail feathers at the upper left corner\u00a0of the frame as it skedaddled from the post. As I often say, bird photography isn’t easy.<\/p>\n

In the last week or so I’ve been seeing a lot of Swainson’s Hawks after a long winter without them. It’s so very nice to have them back!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Sometimes even small prey doesn’t give up without a fight.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38947,"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":[6,334,392,645],"tags":[2934,2306,647,2935,1174,2283,178,256,646,311,315],"class_list":["post-38943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-adult-intermediate-morph","tag-back-button-focus","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-coup-de-grace","tag-eating","tag-graphic-images","tag-hunting","tag-prey","tag-swainsons-hawk","tag-utah-2","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/swainsons-hawk-9299-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-a87","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38943","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=38943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}