![\"short-eared](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/short-eared-owl-2468-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\nRaptors can be quite innovative in their hunting techniques.<\/p>\n
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1\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 1000, 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 Two mornings ago\u00a0this Short-eared Owl was hunting low and slow in a pasture in northern Utah.\u00a0The fence posts enclosing the pasture can be seen at the top of the frame. It would hunt on the wing\u00a0for a while and then return to one of the posts near where I was parked on a road and hunt from there.<\/p>\n But while it was hunting in flight it often wasn’t hunting randomly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 1000, 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 There was perhaps 100 dispersed\u00a0cows in the large pasture and the owl was obviously hunting voles or other prey\u00a0that might get stirred up by the grazing cows as they moved. The bird in flight\u00a0would approach one of the cows quite closely and then move on to another cow. And another. One time I saw it dive on prey very near a cow but it was so far away I\u00a0couldn’t tell if it was\u00a0successful.<\/p>\n My first close introduction to raptors as a young\u00a0kid was when I was driving tractor on the Montana farm. Buteos of several species would follow the tractor very closely as they hunted for rodents and rabbits stirred up by my plow. Driving tractor was boring for me so I entertained myself by paying very close attention to the hawks – they were\u00a0fascinating to watch. But that distraction\u00a0didn’t make for very straight plow lines in the fields and I would often miss spots with the plow (we called those spots\u00a0“skips”) where weeds would later grow tall. My\u00a0Dad was not amused…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n On the same morning I spent some time watching this colony of Cliff Swallows on a vertical cliff (only some of the nests in the colony can be seen here). Most of the time the birds were undisturbed as they went about their daily routine of hunting insects and returning to their nests. But as I was watching a few of the nests\u00a0through my lens the birds suddenly emerged from them in huge numbers, obviously in distress.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n At first I didn’t know why they were upset\u00a0but as soon as I looked away from my lens I saw an adult Red-tailed Hawk flying as slowly as it possibly could (wings flapping furiously to stay airborne)\u00a0in front of the cliff face and very<\/em> close to the nests (I\u00a0never got any shots of it in flight).\u00a0It did that twice and then…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/1250, 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 it flew to a nearby portion of the cliff that was\u00a0at an angle\u00a0to the cliff face the nests were on and landed very precariously on a flowering plant growing out of the vertical cliff. The swallows were not happy about the presence of the hawk and constantly harassed it (one of them, out of focus, can be seen at lower left). Once the hawk stabilized itself on the perch I could see that it was obviously watching the cluster of nests in front of and below it.<\/p>\n I’m convinced the hawk was hunting swallows. I’m sure it couldn’t catch a healthy adult swallow\u00a0but perhaps it was watching for unfortunate fledglings that fell out of the nest or failed in their first flight. Small birds aren’t normally part of the diet of red-tails but like many predators they’re opportunistic feeders and after all, food is food.<\/p>\n These were hunting behaviors I’d never noticed before from any raptor and I thought it was pretty unusual to see two of\u00a0them on the same morning.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Raptors can be quite innovative in their hunting techniques.<\/p>\n![\"short-eared](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/short-eared-owl-2464-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"cliff](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/cliff-swallow-0853-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"cliff](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/cliff-swallow-0859-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/red-tailed-hawk-2324-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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