{"id":40662,"date":"2016-07-08T06:04:31","date_gmt":"2016-07-08T12:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=40662"},"modified":"2016-07-08T06:26:55","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T12:26:55","slug":"ferruginous-hawk-looking-for-and-finding-mystery-nesting-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/08\/ferruginous-hawk-looking-for-and-finding-mystery-nesting-material\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferruginous Hawk Looking For And Finding (mystery) Nesting Material"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ferruginous\u00a0Hawks use sticks, twigs, ground debris, bark, sod, cow dung and even bones as nesting material but I have no idea what this\u00a0bird picked up and flew away with.<\/p>\n

I used high ISO settings for these shots because I\u00a0had very little light and I wanted enough shutter speed for takeoff.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ferruginous<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 1250, 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

I watched this bird and its mate sporadically for several days last month in Montana’s Centennial Valley as they flew from power poles to collect nesting material in the area. This one had just\u00a0landed\u00a0but it apparently had no specific piece of nesting material in mind\u00a0because it spent\u00a0considerable time picking up and then rejecting various items.\u00a0The bird was picky!<\/p>\n

I liked the rock to the left of the hawk and I didn’t want to crop half of it out so in this composition\u00a0the bird is almost centered in the frame.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ferruginous<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 1250, 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 hawk picked up several pieces of potential nesting material and then discarded them before finally settling on one that served its purpose. Here the bird has dropped\u00a0a stick which is falling to the ground.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ferruginous<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/6.3, 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

But eventually this mystery item was the\u00a0nesting material\u00a0of choice. I chose to\u00a0post this image because it shows the lighter “underside?” of the item which I thought might help for identification (yes, I’m curious about what it might be).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ferruginous<\/p>\n

A huge crop of the previous photo (5% of the original image) gives us a\u00a0 closer look. Sod or cow dung with\u00a0soil stuck to it come to mind but those are only wild guesses.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ferruginous<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/6.3, 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

Here’s a look at the other side of the item.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ferruginous1\/2000, f\/6.3, 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

When the hawk took off carrying the nesting material it came straight at me at first but then it veered off to my right. I quite like this image, largely because of the head-on approach, the\u00a0symmetry of the wings in this position and the proximity of the wing-tips to the ground.<\/p>\n

I posted another photo of this bird in flight from my laptop while I was still in Montana so some may remember seeing this nesting material but I thought the hawk and its behavior deserved a little more exposure.<\/p>\n

Besides, I’d really like to figure out what this nesting material might be and my readers have helped me solve puzzles before…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ferruginous Hawks use sticks, twigs, ground debris, bark, sod, cow dung and even bones as nesting material but I have no idea what this bird picked up and flew away with.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40666,"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":[334,377,1493,391],"tags":[531,555,1145,146,958,220,231],"class_list":["post-40662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ferruginous-hawks","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-buteo-regalis","tag-centennial-valley","tag-ferrruginous-hawk","tag-flight","tag-high-iso","tag-montana-2","tag-nesting-material"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/ferruginous-hawk-9981-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-azQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40662","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=40662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}