{"id":39499,"date":"2016-05-15T05:51:25","date_gmt":"2016-05-15T11:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=39499"},"modified":"2016-05-15T07:09:42","modified_gmt":"2016-05-15T13:09:42","slug":"a-mated-pair-of-swainsons-hawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/15\/a-mated-pair-of-swainsons-hawks\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mated Pair Of Swainson’s Hawks"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s my intention to finally post the series of images I took of these two hawks as they mated but there are too many\u00a0photos that I want to include for a single post. So this morning I’ll “introduce” the two birds and include some preliminary background and\u00a0then post the mating sequence tomorrow.<\/p>\n

I first noticed these birds weeks ago when they were building their nest in a tree near a ranch house but after the nest was completed nothing happened for quite a while. Both birds continued to hang around the area but they mostly stayed away from the nest (as always I never approached the nest). Then four days ago I photographed them as they mated and now it appears that they’re incubating eggs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/1250, f\/6.3, ISO 250, 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 male and female don’t look very much alike. This is the female, a young light morph Swainson’s. Both hawks are fond of this rocky perch but the female seems to have a particular attachment to it (the male spends much of his time on a nearby power pole). On one morning the female, over a period of about three hours, was perched here every time I\u00a0drove by.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 250, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

One morning she gave me a nice wing lift before she took off. No matter what she was doing I thought she always had a rather stern look about her.<\/p>\n

Oops, I just now noticed that I didn’t place my copyright logo carefully. I’ll have to fix that – sometime…<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

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

This is the handsome male of the pair – a light morph adult. This is one of the relatively few times I saw him perched on the craggy rock preferred by the female.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

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

One morning I noticed him flying in to the rocky perch so I pre-focused on it and caught him with his wings up just after he landed. As you can imagine the bright whites under his wings present a rather daunting exposure problem in strong light.<\/p>\n

Ok, tomorrow it’s my plan to post the mating series. It was the closest I’ve ever been to\u00a0copulating\u00a0buteos and completely unexpected so I wasn’t prepared for the situation but I was\u00a0still able to get some interesting images.<\/p>\n

I hope you enjoy them.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

The male and female don’t look very much alike.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39502,"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":[2966,647,137,190,1472,211,1016,230,646],"class_list":["post-39499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-adultl","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-female","tag-juvenile","tag-light-morph","tag-male","tag-mating","tag-nesting","tag-swainsons-hawk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/swainsons-hawk-8985-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-ah5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39499","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=39499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}