{"id":40089,"date":"2016-06-14T05:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-06-14T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=40089"},"modified":"2016-06-14T05:00:25","modified_gmt":"2016-06-14T11:00:25","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-with-a-snake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/14\/red-tailed-hawk-with-a-snake\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk With A Snake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Red-tailed Hawks are known to prey on snakes but it’s something I’ve not seen often and I’d never documented it well.<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

Ten days ago I found this adult Red-tailed Hawk with a snake on top of a power pole in Montana’s Centennial Valley. They were strongly side-lit but I was able to get quite a few images that were good enough for documentary purposes.<\/p>\n

The hawk must have just landed there with the snake because it was still alive. I include this shot for two reasons –\u00a0the light on the\u00a0serpent shows the longitudinal stripes that suggest to me that it might be one of the\u00a0species of garter snakes (which would be appropriate\u00a0for the habitat nearby) and we can clearly see that the snake is still alive.<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But the hawk was intent on killing it and it didn’t take long, though it was a slower process than usual for typical small mammal prey. It worked over much of the body of the snake with its beak but it concentrated on its head and a few inches behind the head. It was almost is if it was trying to “tenderize” the entire snake.<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Once the bird was satisfied that the snake was dead it took off with it again. Here we can see, several inches behind the head, the only place on the snake’s body with obvious damage.<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps to compensate for the weight of the snake the hawk took off at a much steeper angle than I anticipated so I clipped body parts in many of the images taken\u00a0after launch. As far as I could tell the bird didn’t eat any of the snake – it was likely intended for chicks in the nest. There are nests nearby in the tree line directly south of this location.<\/p>\n

When I’ve (rarely)\u00a0seen Red-tails with snakes in the past they’ve\u00a0usually been high in the sky so it was quite interesting to be\u00a0significantly closer to this one and watch as it killed the snake.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Red-tailed Hawks are known to prey on snakes but it’s something I’ve not seen often and I’d never documented it well.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40093,"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":[334,392,360,450],"tags":[452,555,2985,220,256,263,451,1494],"class_list":["post-40089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-centennial-valley","tag-killing-snake","tag-montana-2","tag-prey","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-snake"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/red-tailed-hawk-8999-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-aqB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40089","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=40089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}