![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/swainsons-hawk-7175-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"swainsons-hawk-7175-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis hawk is a light morph – by far the most common of the three\u00a0color phases. I believe this bird has a bloody lower belly which isn’t part of the normal color down there.<\/p>\n
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And here’s an intermediate morph.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Another look at the same bird – this time in flight so we can see more of its ventral surface.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n And this is a\u00a0fairly typical dark morph Swainson’s. Dark morphs are the rarest of the three color phases so I very seldom see or photograph them. In fact I believe I’ve only\u00a0seen a\u00a0handful of\u00a0truly dark morphs\u00a0in the last ten years. I\u00a0encountered this one a few years ago in dark and stormy conditions in Montana’s Centennial Valley.\u00a0Most dark morphs have at least some white on their face just as this\u00a0bird does. Many have more white than this.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/1250, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n But two days ago I photographed this\u00a0striking dark morph in northern Utah. It’s colors were slight variations of a\u00a0deep chocolate-brown. I was very excited to see this bird and I was afraid that it would fly off before I could pop off a few shots but in the end it turned out to be one of the “tamest” adult buteos I’ve ever photographed. The only complaint I have is that it gave me very little pose variety but here I caught it giving me the best coy look it could muster.<\/p>\n As stated in the ABA Blog about a different dark morph Swainson’s\u00a0– “the lack of even a little white on the face points to a truly dark-morph Swainson\u2019s Hawk, as opposed to a rufous\/intermediate or dark intermediate morph<\/em>“.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n I wanted to get a little better look at the breast color of this bird so I began to creep forward in my pickup very slowly on the road, fully expecting the hawk to spook but it didn’t even twitch or look the least bit nervous. Here I’m nearly directly across from it on the road and this image was shot vertically in order to get the entire bird in the frame. This photo has been cropped very little.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 227mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Here I’m slightly past the hawk and even\u00a0with me this close (now I’ve switched to my smaller zoom lens)\u00a0it was comfortable enough to preen and scratch its face. After quite a while it flew off, not because it was nervous in my presence but just because it apparently felt the urge to do so.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n