{"id":66209,"date":"2018-11-25T05:11:16","date_gmt":"2018-11-25T12:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=66209"},"modified":"2018-11-25T06:15:08","modified_gmt":"2018-11-25T13:15:08","slug":"the-peregrine-falcon-and-the-coot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/11\/25\/the-peregrine-falcon-and-the-coot\/","title":{"rendered":"The Peregrine Falcon And The Coot"},"content":{"rendered":"

For me at least Peregrine Falcons are usually unapproachable but occasionally when they’ve had prey I’ve been able to get close enough for quality photos. That’s why I appreciate the sacrifice of this American Coot.<\/p>\n

Most of these images are new to my blog but I’ve posted photo #5 previously.<\/p>\n

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1\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 1250, 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

We found this presumed female (based largely on size) last January in a local park. It wasn’t long after the sun had come up over the nearby mountains but there was heavy cloud cover so the lighting conditions were atrocious, especially at first. I watched her walk quite a distance across the heavily frosted grass and I wondered what her destination was until it soon became apparent that she was walking toward a frozen and\u00a0partially consumed coot that she’d apparently killed the previous evening. The detached wing of the coot can be seen sticking up out of the grass\u00a0behind her left leg.<\/p>\n

Here she was considering taking off but she changed her mind…<\/p>\n

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1\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 1250, 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

and turned her attention to the coot’s wing. She stood over it for a while before she…<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 1250, 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

walked a short distance to the rest of the carcass and began to enjoy her breakfast. But for the entire time she was eating she\u00a0seemed concerned about the wing in front of her (maybe she thought I might abscond with it…) so she…<\/p>\n

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1\/640, f\/6.3, ISO 1250, 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

eventually pulled it nearer to the carcass which reunited what was left of\u00a0the coot with its wing. I think she has a noble look here and in my opinion the wedge-shaped wing adds an interesting graphic dimension.<\/p>\n

One lesson I’ve learned over the years is that when a raptor’s enthusiasm for its meal diminishes, as eventually happened with her,\u00a0and\u00a0it begins to look around the landscape it’s often about to take off. I was too close optically\u00a0to avoid clipping body parts if that happened so I quickly\u00a0removed my teleconverter and I’m glad I did.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 1000, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

By then the light had improved a little so with the tc off I had enough shutter speed to get her sharp and enough room in the frame to avoid cutting off body parts. I love her push-off posture and her wing position and I even like the remnant of the coot’s wing because it helps to tell the story of the image. And the open beak allows us to\u00a0see the falcon tooth (tomial tooth) if we look closely.<\/p>\n

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Ok, time to fess up. Here’s the real story of why I chose to make a Peregrine Falcon the focus of today’s post. There’s a new documentary from NOVA on PBS called “The World’s Fastest Animal” and based on the title you know it has to be about the Peregrine Falcon.<\/p>\n

I watched it two nights ago and I think it’s excellent so I thought many of my readers might like to see it. If you’ve ever had any doubts about the devotion of falconers to their birds, or their enthusiasm for what they do, just wait till you meet crazy Englishman and falconer Lloyd Buck! But the stars of the show are Moses and Rudy, two captive Peregrines that Lloyd puts through their paces as the three of them demonstrate the learning process of training falconry birds and their incredible speed and hunting skills.<\/p>\n

Even though I have mixed feelings about falconry I enjoyed the hell out of this program.<\/p>\n

Here’s the link\u00a0on\u00a0my\u00a0local\u00a0PBS\u00a0station<\/a>. I watched it online but it can also be seen directly on your local PBS station and it isn’t scheduled to “expire” online until 12\/19\/18. If you watch it I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I believe you will.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

For me at least Peregrine Falcons are usually unapproachable but occasionally when they’ve had prey I’ve been able to get close enough for quality photos. That’s why I appreciate the sacrifice of this American Coot.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66214,"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":[6,334,1004,392,582],"tags":[583,847,137,4346,3273,541,2738,4345,306],"class_list":["post-66209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-falconry-2","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-peregrine-falcons","tag-falco-peregrinus","tag-falconry","tag-female","tag-nova","tag-pbs","tag-peregrine-falcon","tag-takeoff","tag-the-worlds-fastest-animal","tag-tomial-tooth"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/peregrine-falcon-6288-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-hdT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66209","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=66209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}