{"id":6621,"date":"2012-07-18T05:00:45","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=6621"},"modified":"2012-09-02T12:55:41","modified_gmt":"2012-09-02T18:55:41","slug":"rough-legged-hawk-hunting-voles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/18\/rough-legged-hawk-hunting-voles\/","title":{"rendered":"Rough-legged Hawk Hunting Voles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Out of pure habit I still look for Rough-legged Hawks whenever I pass one of their favorite perches, despite the fact that they’re now\u00a0on their arctic and subarctic breeding grounds in northern Alaska and Canada.\u00a0 Last winter\u00a0it\u00a0seemed that these hawks were everywhere in northern Utah and it wasn’t unusual for me to see a dozen or more different birds in a morning of shooting.\u00a0 They’re a particularly handsome raptor and I love photographing them.<\/p>\n

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\"rough<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0I found this one hunting voles along the Antelope Island causeway this past December.\u00a0 A moderate headwind slowed the bird down and made\u00a0getting flight shots a little easier.<\/p>\n

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\"rough<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

When hunting they’re usually looking down which makes it difficult to get eye contact but occasionally you can catch them looking at you if you’re quick on the trigger.\u00a0 Here the wings are mostly horizontal but for me the tilt of the tail helps to compensate for that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

This eye\/head\u00a0angle is more typical of a hunting bird.\u00a0 The position of the left wing probably won’t appeal to many but there’s something about the curves of both wings that I liked.\u00a0 The sky color may seem a little funky but that’s the color it really was so I didn’t play with it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

Here the hawk has captured a baby vole.\u00a0 This surprised me a little because typically voles don’t breed during the coldest three months of winter but I did find sources that say they sometimes breed as late as December.\u00a0 The hawk swallowed this tiny\u00a0vole whole, in flight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course most of the voles captured are adults, as is the case here.\u00a0 This bird lifted off with the vole in its talons and then seemed to search for a more suitable place on the causeway to enjoy its meal.\u00a0 This is the true angle of flight as I took the photo so I didn’t rotate to level the bird.<\/p>\n

I always look forward to the return of Rough-legged Hawks in the fall.\u00a0 Hopefully they’ve had a successful breeding season in the north country and we’ll have them in good numbers again this winter.<\/p>\n

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

Out of pure habit I still look for Rough-legged Hawks whenever I pass one of their favorite perches, despite the fact that they’re now\u00a0on their arctic and subarctic breeding grounds in northern Alaska and Canada.\u00a0 Last winter\u00a0it\u00a0seemed that these hawks were everywhere in northern Utah and it wasn’t unusual for me to see a dozen or more different birds in a morning of shooting.\u00a0 They’re a particularly handsome raptor and I love photographing them.   \u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc \u00a0I found this one hunting voles along the Antelope Island causeway this past December.\u00a0 A moderate headwind slowed the bird down and made\u00a0getting flight shots a little easier.     \u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc When hunting they’re usually looking down which makes it difficult to get eye contact but occasionally you can catch them looking at you if you’re quick on the trigger.\u00a0 Here the wings are mostly horizontal but for me the tilt of the tail helps to compensate for that.     \u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc This eye\/head\u00a0angle is more typical of a hunting bird.\u00a0 The position of the left wing probably won’t appeal to many but there’s something about the curves of both wings that I liked.\u00a0 The sky color may seem a little funky but that’s the color it really was so I didn’t play with it.     \u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc Here the hawk has captured a baby vole.\u00a0 This surprised me a little…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,4,334,392,358],"tags":[493,534,146,178,256,269,311,315],"class_list":["post-6621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-rough-legged-hawks","tag-antelope-island-causeway","tag-buteo-lagopus","tag-flight","tag-hunting","tag-prey","tag-rough-legged-hawk","tag-utah-2","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-1IN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6621","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=6621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}