{"id":58582,"date":"2018-04-22T05:18:08","date_gmt":"2018-04-22T11:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=58582"},"modified":"2018-04-22T11:25:42","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T17:25:42","slug":"female-american-kestrel-with-prey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/22\/female-american-kestrel-with-prey\/","title":{"rendered":"Female American Kestrel With Prey"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a while since a kestrel allowed me a close approach so I\u00a0appreciated the close action as this female enjoyed her furry breakfast on a great perch.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I photographed her 4 days ago in northern Utah. This photo is similar to the single image I posted recently except that here we can actually see part of the vole that was hidden behind the rock in the earlier photo.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I was a little frustrated by the sun angle because out of\u00a0many images of her actually eating and swallowing\u00a0very few of\u00a0 them had any light in the eye but this one was an exception. Here the catch light is right at the\u00a0edge of her iris.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Once when she was tugging on a long piece of\u00a0hide with fur attached to one end she almost fell off her perch when it finally pulled away from the vole’s body. There’s no catch light here but I went with it anyway.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Unfortunately she turned to face me for most of the time she was eating so my angle on her wasn’t ideal. I had to really concentrate to get light in her eye whenever I fired off a burst. Here she’s swallowing a good-sized portion of the\u00a0vole.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

She roused soon after she finished her meal but once again getting any light in the eye was problematic. In a burst of about a dozen shots during her rouse this is the only one with a catch light.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I had been shooting from my pickup on the isolated road but when I saw a vehicle approaching in the distance I had to move out of the way which changed my angle on the bird and\u00a0perch. Here she’s either scratching her face and neck\u00a0or cleaning vole remnants off her bill – the action was too fast for me to tell for sure but I suspect the latter.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

By the time she eventually took off I had moved my pickup again so once more our perspective on the falcon has changed. Unfortunately I cut off a large portion of her left wing in the next shot of the burst.<\/p>\n

I was surprised she was cooperative for as long as she was. I’m confident that if she hadn’t been eating it would have been a different story altogether.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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It’s been a while since a kestrel allowed me a close approach so I appreciated the close action as this female enjoyed her furry breakfast on a great perch (photos are not gory). <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58589,"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":[340,334,392],"tags":[28,566,1174,131,137,256,994,315],"class_list":["post-58582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-american-kestrel","tag-catch-light","tag-eating","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-female","tag-prey","tag-rouse","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/american-kestrel-3255-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-feS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58582","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=58582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}