{"id":43369,"date":"2016-11-08T06:04:05","date_gmt":"2016-11-08T13:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=43369"},"modified":"2016-11-08T11:12:45","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T18:12:45","slug":"northern-harriers-why-its-wise-to-be-wary-while-youre-eating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/08\/northern-harriers-why-its-wise-to-be-wary-while-youre-eating\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Harriers – Why It’s Wise To Be Wary While You’re Eating"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally I like to reach way back into my archives. Today is one of those days.<\/p>\n

The winter of 2008 was cold and brutal in northern Utah which put a lot of stress on birds. More than once I noticed ducks frozen into the ice at dawn. Whenever that happened Northern Harriers took advantage of the unexpected\u00a0bounty and competed viciously for the food.<\/p>\n

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\"northern-harrier-8794-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS\u00a0USM + EF 1.4 II Extender, not baited, set up or called in <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This harrier was trying to protect its prize and gobble down bits of frozen Mallard at the same time – its protective threat posture and beak-full of feathers\u00a0says it all. Other harriers were in the immediate vicinity and occasionally one or more would swoop down and compete for the duck.<\/p>\n

While watching through my lens my field of view was extremely limited so I usually didn’t even know when something exciting was about to happen. About all I could do was watch the bird on the duck,\u00a0try to read its behavior, and then\u00a0hope my reflexes were quick enough when another bird came in and that’s something that happened often.<\/p>\n

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\"northern-harrier-8827-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS\u00a0USM + EF 1.4 II Extender, not baited, set up or called in <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Bushwhacked! Another\u00a0harrier rushed in and challenged the first bird for the duck and immediately a vicious fight broke out.<\/p>\n

The multiple battles over this Mallard\u00a0were some of the most exciting events I’ve ever witnessed and photographed in nature. Way back in February of 2011 I posted many images of the action but that was very early in my blogging career and my site drew little traffic back then so\u00a0few of my current readers have ever seen those photos.<\/p>\n

About a dozen of the best images of the fighting can be seen here<\/a>. If you\u00a0appreciate interesting behaviors and\u00a0incredible action I promise\u00a0it would be worth your time to click the link.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: Apparently there was a WordPress glitch this morning and email notifications to subscribers for this post weren’t sent out. So many, perhaps most, of my readers are unlikely to even see this post. Hate it when that happens!<\/em><\/p>\n

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

The winter of 2008 was cold and brutal in northern Utah which put a lot of stress on birds. More than once I noticed ducks frozen into the ice at dawn. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43370,"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":[334,2782,394,341],"tags":[86,1008,140,213,234],"class_list":["post-43369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-northern-harriers","tag-circus-cyaneus","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-fighting","tag-mallard","tag-northern-harrier"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/northern-harrier-8794-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-bhv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43369","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=43369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}