\u00a01\/1600, f\/8, ISO 500, 100-400 @ 380mm, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\nThis was my first shot ever of a Swainson’s Hawk – taken at Bear River\u00a0Migratory Bird Refuge.\u00a0 I well remember shaking with excitement at getting so close.\u00a0 Buck fever and bird photography are a poor mix but I eventually calmed down enough to get a couple of relatively sharp shots with the 100-400 zoom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I need to spend some more time with these hawks – partly because I’m still weak in identifying the different color morphs and ages.\u00a0 Hopefully I’ll soon get the chance to improve my ID skills.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A recent comment on this blog by Mike Shaw reminded me that I’ve never\u00a0made a Swainson’s Hawk blog post.\u00a0 \u00a0Part of the reason is because I’ve had relatively few opportunities with them so my files are limited.\u00a0 But in reviewing my images\u00a0I thought I had enough acceptable photos to make a representative post on the species.\u00a0 I’ve deliberately chosen shots that show these hawks from a variety of angles – front, back, side and in flight.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc I found this young bird hunting grasshoppers\u00a0along a gravel road at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.\u00a0 It would catch a ‘hopper, eat it on the road and then return to a nearby fencepost to watch for more of them.\u00a0 The bird seemed to be\u00a0 fearless and paid me very little attention. \u00a01\/1200, f\/8, ISO 400, 500 f\/4 Occasionally it would land on a different post but it didn’t stray far for quite a while.\u00a0 With this pose we get a good look at the back side.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f\/8, ISO 320, 500 f\/4 I thought this screaming pose was interesting enough to include here despite the nictitating membrane partially covering the eye and the slight\u00a0tightness on the tail.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a01\/1000, f\/8, ISO 320, 500\u00a0f\/4\u00a0 \u00a0This is a different bird and I include the image for the good look at the underside plumage patterns in flight.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a01\/1600, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc I found this cooperative adult at Farmington Bay\u00a0Wildlife…<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,337,645],"tags":[49,647,397,146,648,263,646],"class_list":["post-4478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-diurnal-raptors","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-farmington-bay","tag-flight","tag-identification","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-swainsons-hawk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-1ae","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4478","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=4478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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