{"id":39414,"date":"2016-05-12T04:00:40","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T10:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=39414"},"modified":"2016-05-12T03:53:26","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T09:53:26","slug":"swainsons-hawk-kama-sutra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/12\/swainsons-hawk-kama-sutra\/","title":{"rendered":"Swainson’s Hawk Kama Sutra"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a wonderful morning with raptors in\u00a0northern Utah\u00a0yesterday. Red-tailed Hawks, Swainson’s Hawks\u00a0and Short-eared Owls were abundant and there was even a seemingly displaced Osprey that continues to hang out in an area very unusual for the species.<\/p>\n

But a mating pair of Swainson’s Hawks stole the show.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's1\/1000, f\/9, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I was photographing the female of the pair when out of the blue (literally) the male came swooping in to mate with her. I was unprepared for the action but still got some shots that I like\u00a0a lot – this is one of them. Their somewhat unusual body positions inspired my title.<\/p>\n

I keep looking at this image and trying to figure out for sure (I do have my suspicions)\u00a0where the feathers of one bird begin and those of the other bird end – particularly some of the feathers under the right wing of the male. I believe I’ll solve that little mystery when I’ve had time to review and cull all the images I took yesterday but that’s not going to happen for a day or two. I was\u00a0exhausted\u00a0after my very long day yesterday but I want another go at some of these raptors so… you guessed it, I’m heading\u00a0that way again this morning. Early.<\/p>\n

Wake up time\u00a0was 3:20 AM. I need sleep! And coffee!!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – Sometime in the near future when I’ve had time to review, cull and process these\u00a0photos I’m sure I’ll post a long sequence of images of these birds mating, including some of the interesting background that led up to the event and what happened after.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

I had a wonderful morning with raptors yesterday but a mating pair of Swainson’s Hawks stole the show.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39415,"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":[334,391,645],"tags":[647,2852,2963,1016,646],"class_list":["post-39414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-copulating","tag-kama-sutra","tag-mating","tag-swainsons-hawk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/swainsons-hawk-7836-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-afI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39414","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=39414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}