{"id":45786,"date":"2017-02-09T07:07:22","date_gmt":"2017-02-09T14:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=45786"},"modified":"2017-02-09T08:47:16","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T15:47:16","slug":"male-american-kestrel-ol-bloody-foot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/09\/male-american-kestrel-ol-bloody-foot\/","title":{"rendered":"Male American Kestrel – Ol’ Bloody Foot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Little quirks in bird behavior often pique my curiosity even though I know there’ll likely never be a definitive explanation for them.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I spotted this male American Kestrel perched on a rock very close to the road at Farmington yesterday morning. I fully expected him to fly off as I approached but to my surprise he didn’t seem the least bit nervous and he held his ground (rock). He gave me very little variety in poses as he stood there on one foot.<\/p>\n

And the fact that it was his left<\/em> foot (based on the position of bloody spots)\u00a0has possible significance later in this story.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Eventually he turned to his left and stared intently at something in the grasses. Usually he was looking even further to his left than this so I never got good eye contact. He was obviously looking at potential prey in that direction so when he took off after it….<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

of course I got only butt shots.<\/p>\n

I only include this image to show you that his right foot was already heavily bloodied when he launched (and that there’s a spot of blood on the rock).<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

To my surprise he\u00a0returned to the same spot on the\u00a0rock several seconds later, sans prey, but here’s when things became slightly strange. For some reason he didn’t want to put his right foot down on the rock.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

He held it suspended in the air in awkward-looking positions\u00a0for several minutes. Here he’s been grooming his belly with his beak and he held that foot up during the process (occasionally he’d look up at me while he was preening and that’s when I snapped this photo).<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

One time\u00a0he tucked the bloody foot into his belly feathers in a resting pose but he still wouldn’t put it down\u00a0on the rock.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Soon\u00a0he pulled the foot out\u00a0but once again he held it in\u00a0a somewhat\u00a0unusual position and didn’t put it down. When he eventually took off (I missed the takeoff shots\u00a0because I was removing my teleconverter) he’d still never put that foot on the rock after landing the second time\u00a0that I know of.<\/p>\n

I can only guess as to why. Perhaps he injured that foot when he took off after prey but I doubt that because none of his other body language hinted at any discomfort or awkwardness. He always\u00a0seemed very relaxed and at ease. Once or\u00a0twice he picked briefly\u00a0at that foot with his beak\u00a0as if\u00a0he was trying to clean it but it was obviously a half-hearted attempt. I’m also fairly\u00a0confident that the blood wasn’t from any possible injury\u00a0to his own foot because there was so much of it (even at the base of his tail and rump as we\u00a0can see in the first photo) –\u00a0birds have very little circulation to their\u00a0lower legs and feet.<\/p>\n

Much ado about nothing I suppose but one of my many personality disorders is my tendency to make mountains out of mole hills when it comes to bird behaviors. I can’t help myself and I doubt it will ever change.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – Sorry for publishing late this morning. I slept in until almost 5 AM. It felt decadent and wonderful!<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Little quirks in bird behavior often pique my curiosity even though I know there’ll likely never be a definitive explanation for them.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45788,"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":true,"_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":[340,5,334,2782,395],"tags":[28,3111,131,1008,211,255],"class_list":["post-45786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-miscellaneous","tag-american-kestrel","tag-davis-county","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-male","tag-preening"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/american-kestrel-0974-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-bUu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45786","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=45786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}