{"id":49918,"date":"2017-07-12T05:27:28","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T11:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=49918"},"modified":"2017-07-12T05:27:28","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T11:27:28","slug":"prairie-falcon-attempting-an-incognito-takeoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/12\/prairie-falcon-attempting-an-incognito-takeoff\/","title":{"rendered":"Prairie Falcon Attempting An Incognito Takeoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

High perches are unusual in the flat bottomland expanses of Montana’s huge Centennial Valley so the few that exist can be a draw for raptors and other birds.<\/p>\n

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Yesterday morning this imposing ranch gate on the remote “North Road” of the valley provided me some wonderful opportunities with both a family of Mountain Bluebirds and an elusive Prairie Falcon. Today we’ll have a look at the falcon.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 500<\/em>, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Prairie Falcons are nearly always extremely difficult to approach and until I found this bird each one of them I’d seen on this trip had spooked from about a quarter-mile away. So I was pleasantly surprised when this one allowed a significantly closer approach.<\/p>\n

It was apparently reluctant to leave the easy hunting views provided by the huge ranch gate in the previous photo. And I was even more surprised that the falcon turned out to be an adult instead of a (usually) more approachable juvenile.<\/p>\n

It was relaxed at first (as demonstrated by this clenched foot pose) but the more time I spent with it the more it seemed to be a little concerned about my presence. I prepared for takeoff but given the direction it was facing I was concerned about the possibility that the massive log beam it was perched on would block my view of the bird as it took off.<\/p>\n

And that’s exactly what happened.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 500<\/em>, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the best shot I was able to get of the takeoff because the falcon was almost immediately hidden by the thickness of that huge log beam. I actually suspect that the shy bird purposely chose that flight path in a deliberate attempt to remain as incognito as possible as it lifted off.<\/p>\n

Because of the presence of the massive log so close to the falcon’s body the image is far from a classic takeoff shot but for my tastes it’s just different enough to have significant interest.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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High perches are unusual in the flat bottomland expanses of Montana’s huge Centennial Valley so the few that exist can be a draw for raptors and other birds.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49921,"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":[334,395,1493,371],"tags":[24,555,538,146,220,254,2738],"class_list":["post-49918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-prairie-falcons","tag-adult","tag-centennial-valley","tag-falco-mexicanus","tag-flight","tag-montana-2","tag-prairie-falcon","tag-takeoff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/prairie-falcon-3862-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-cZ8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49918","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=49918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}