{"id":54723,"date":"2017-12-18T06:26:44","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T13:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=54723"},"modified":"2017-12-18T09:20:26","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:20:26","slug":"rough-legged-hawk-a-successful-hunting-trip-documented-from-beginning-to-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/18\/rough-legged-hawk-a-successful-hunting-trip-documented-from-beginning-to-end\/","title":{"rendered":"Rough-legged Hawk – A Successful Hunting Trip Documented From Beginning To End"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plus….. a milestone.<\/p>\n

In a recent post<\/a> I\u00a0reported on\u00a0an unsuccessful hunting trip this immature Rough-legged Hawk made from\u00a0a kestrel nest box at Farmington Bay WMA last week. Shortly after that fruitless foray the hawk had better luck and today’s post is my attempt to document it. Some of the images are only of documentary quality but I think they help to tell the story. For the sake of convenience I’ll once again refer to this bird as a male even though I don’t really know its sex.<\/p>\n

Sorry, no image techs today. I ran out of time. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Eight minutes after the\u00a0hawk returned to the box without prey (the hunting trip I reported on a few\u00a0days ago) he went hunting again but this time he took off away from me. And this time he wasn’t going after a specific vole he’d spotted from the perch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Instead he hunted from the air – far away from me. He would fly around for a while and then hover over a specific spot, which he did repeatedly. The breeze was from the north so he always had his back to me as he hovered but there was good light on him and I like the Wasatch Mountains in the background. He hunted unsuccessfully this way for quite a while.<\/p>\n

But eventually he dived (there’s that awkward\u00a0past tense again, dived or dove?…)\u00a0on prey and a very impressive stoop it was, from a great height and at a very\u00a0steep angle.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This hawk was serious<\/em> about catching that vole! He came in so fast and steep that I was actually concerned for his safety. Just look how fast he’s still going while he’s only\u00a0about 6 – 8′ off of the ground. Splat?<\/p>\n

He disappeared in the long grass for a few moments….<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

but soon he emerged with a vole in his talons…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

and headed my way again with the obvious intention of returning to the nest box with the prey.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

At this point I had a decision to make. How long do I keep my lens on the hawk as\u00a0he approached? I wanted frame-filling\u00a0photos of the\u00a0bird in flight but as greedy as I am I also lusted after shots of the bird landing on the nest box. It takes time for the photographer to transition between the two types of shots (I have to pre-focus on the box at some point and wait for the hawk to\u00a0enter the frame).\u00a0If I didn’t time it right I’d miss good flight shots that I didn’t need to miss or I’d miss\u00a0the landing (or both). And to complicate matters, when you’re looking through a high-powered lens your sense of distance is seriously distorted so proper timing is very tricky.<\/p>\n

And yup, I screwed it up by waiting just a little\u00a0too long to pre-focus on the box.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the first shot I got as the hawk landed that was relatively sharp and didn’t clip any body parts – his wings were still up but he was already on the box. I sure wish I had another chance at this missed\u00a0opportunity!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I’m quite\u00a0certain the vole was still alive at this point…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

as evidenced by its open eyes, bright catch light and its head still being\u00a0held up\u00a0in this huge crop of the previous photo. I have several other shots\u00a0that include\u00a0the same evidence that the vole was still alive and conscious.<\/p>\n

‘<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Then the hawk hopped off the ledge of the nest box with the obvious intention of using\u00a0its flat roof as a dining table but at that point a noisy hunter pickup came by and made the bird very\u00a0nervous. It hopped back onto the ledge facing away from me in case it had to make its escape from that threatening truck.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But eventually he settled down on the ledge and enjoyed\u00a0his\u00a0meal. I’ll spare you most of the gory details but the hawk was mostly facing away from me as he dined so\u00a0many of those shots aren’t very good anyway.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After he’d gobbled down the last delectable morsel he cleaned his beak on the ledge. At this point I’d removed my teleconverter in case he took off again but he didn’t so I left the area soon after this shot was taken.<\/p>\n

All in all I took 413 shots of this bird over 43 minutes and I enjoyed the hell out of the experience. Good bird!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PS – I can’t resist reporting on a personal milestone that occurred yesterday even though it will likely have very little meaning for my readers if any at all. I\u00a0invested six hours of driving on a birding trip to Box Elder county and came home bird-skunked. The only photos of birds I got were of the “ears” of a Great Horned Owl sticking up out of its hidden\u00a0hideaway and a\u00a0few\u00a0shots of a Prairie Falcon\u00a0perched too far away on a power pole. <\/em><\/p>\n

But it was still a notable trip for me because…\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

my 2014 Ford Ecoboost pickup turned over 100,000 miles while I was on the Promontory Peninsula. It was very near where I had to cut the barbed wire to remove the entangled young Short-eared Owl about 18 months ago so that had meaning for me too – that fence still hasn’t been repaired and there are now lots of cattle in the pasture! <\/em><\/p>\n

I believe I’ve had 12 new Ford pickups over the years and this is the first time I’ve ever kept one of them this long or even approached 100,000 miles. And I estimate that\u00a0almost 90,000 of those miles are “bird miles” – I do very little driving that isn’t bird related.<\/em><\/p>\n

I guess there’s no denying that\u00a0I’m addicted to bird photography…<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Plus….. a milestone.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54730,"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":[6,334,392,358],"tags":[3749,534,3748,1174,1008,146,1347,178,256,269,588,315],"class_list":["post-54723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-rough-legged-hawks","tag-2014-ford-ecoboost-pickup","tag-buteo-lagopus","tag-dive-after-prey","tag-eating","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-flight","tag-hovering","tag-hunting","tag-prey","tag-rough-legged-hawk","tag-stoop","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/rough-legged-hawk-7297-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-eeD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54723","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=54723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}