{"id":40347,"date":"2016-06-24T04:28:39","date_gmt":"2016-06-24T10:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=40347"},"modified":"2016-06-24T04:28:39","modified_gmt":"2016-06-24T10:28:39","slug":"mated-swainsons-hawks-of-different-color-morphs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/24\/mated-swainsons-hawks-of-different-color-morphs\/","title":{"rendered":"Mated Swainson’s Hawks Of Different Color Morphs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps there’s something nurturing for Swainson’s Hawks\u00a0about this particular\u00a0power pole. Every summer for the past few years\u00a0when I visit Montana there’s been a mated pair of Swainson’s Hawks that habitually perch on this same pole located\u00a0a very short distance from the border of Idaho and Montana.\u00a0And it’s obviously\u00a0not the same pair of birds from year to year.<\/p>\n

Swainson’s Hawks come in three different color morphs – light, intermediate and dark and birds of a mated pair can be of the same morph or a mixture of any of the three.<\/p>\n

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

1\/1000, 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

\u00a0On my recent camping trip to Montana about three weeks ago I found this bonded pair of Swainson’s Hawks habitually perching on the same old power pole I’ve been seeing the species on for several years now. Both birds are light morphs, the slightly larger female on the right. Within a couple of days of my arrival in the area she began to incubate eggs in\u00a0their nearby nest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/1600, 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 before that process began the birds sure liked to be close to each other, though I never did see them actually copulate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In stark contrast this is the bonded\u00a0pair of Swainson’s Hawks that habitually perched on the same pole last year – this image was taken in July. The smaller male on the left is a light morph and the female is a dark morph. The color\u00a0difference between them is striking enough to make the uninitiated wonder if they could even be the same species. Though the\u00a0female may look a little grumpy and stand-offish here that really wasn’t the case. She has a stray white feather stuck to her forehead.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Typically when one bird would fly off the other would soon follow. Here the male is taking off on a hunting foray…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

and the female soon followed.<\/p>\n

I always enjoy seeing the different color morphs of Swainson’s Hawks and when they’re a mated pair and I see them together the contrast between color morphs really catches my eye. This year I’m watching a mated pair in northern Utah where the male is a light morph and the female is a juvenile light morph (juveniles look different from adults) – that’s a combination of mated birds\u00a0I hadn’t seen before.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Perhaps there’s something nurturing for Swainson’s Hawks about this particular power pole.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40355,"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":[334,1493,391,645],"tags":[2904,2997,647,2996,969,2032,1472,220,646],"class_list":["post-40347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-nesting-and-mating","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-adult-plumage","tag-bonded-pair","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-color-morphs","tag-dark-morph","tag-idaho","tag-light-morph","tag-montana-2","tag-swainsons-hawk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/swainsons-hawk-8458b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-auL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40347","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=40347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}