{"id":47719,"date":"2017-04-23T05:42:51","date_gmt":"2017-04-23T11:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=47719"},"modified":"2017-04-23T10:12:53","modified_gmt":"2017-04-23T16:12:53","slug":"light-morph-swainsons-hawk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/23\/light-morph-swainsons-hawk\/","title":{"rendered":"Light Morph Swainson’s Hawk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Swainson’s Hawks are awash in northern Utah right now. Yesterday morning I saw more than I could count and some\u00a0were extremely approachable.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, 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\u00a0encountered this light morph Swainson’s on a fencepost next to the road very shortly after dawn. I spent a few minutes photographing it but it was cold\u00a0(33\u00b0 F.) and the hawk was warming in the early morning sun so it barely moved a feather while I was there.<\/p>\n

Once I had a few shots (yes I had more shutter speed than I needed) I decided to move on down the road but that meant I’d have to pass very close to the bird. I don’t like to flush birds but in this situation I had no practical choice so I proceeded very slowly, fully expecting it to take off.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 360mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

But even when I was closest to the post the hawk didn’t fly so when it turned slightly on its perch and gave me more of a side\u00a0view\u00a0I grabbed my “baby lens” and fired off a few shots. I like the ambience of this\u00a0image with the layered colors of the background, the extremely warm side\u00a0light and the old weathered post. The bit of blood on one of the toes is an appropriate touch for this predatory bird.<\/p>\n

I suspect many of these\u00a0hawks are still migrating – there’s just too many for all of them to be nesting in the same general vicinity. But there seems to be plenty of available food (voles mostly) in the\u00a0region so it’s an attractive staging area for them and other birds. Even\u00a0Great\u00a0Blue Herons in good\u00a0numbers are hunting voles in the fields and pastures.<\/p>\n

It should be a good year for raptors in northern Utah –\u00a0at least\u00a0in part\u00a0because\u00a0vole populations seem to be on the upswing.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Swainson’s Hawks are awash in northern Utah right now.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47723,"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":[334,645],"tags":[647,1472,866,646,311,316],"class_list":["post-47719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-light-morph","tag-migration","tag-swainsons-hawk","tag-utah-2","tag-voles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/swainsons-hawk-9873b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-cpF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47719","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=47719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}