1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,\u00a0Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nA few weeks ago at Farmington Bay WMA I came across this male Northern Harrier on the ground as he was attempting to capture a vole. It was obvious that the hawk knew the vole was there but it was hidden beneath the thick, snow-matted grasses and for some reason it didn’t want to be caught.<\/p>\n
The harrier knew where it was but had a hard time getting his talons on it so he kept stabbing at the grasses with his feet as the vole scurried around beneath them. The end result was that it almost looked like the hawk was dancing with his wings out. It was fun to watch but because of the grasses it was difficult to get clear shots of the performing hawk. At least I got a good look at his eye in this shot – usually I didn’t because he was nearly always looking down and\/or had his back to me.<\/p>\n
Eventually he caught the vole but he walked it into even deeper cover before gobbling it down so my photos of him consuming his meal aren’t very good.<\/p>\n
Maybe I’ll have those gory shots for you next time…<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When it comes to catching an uncooperative meal, whatever works.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69817,"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":[334,2782,392,341],"tags":[86,1008,746,4474,211,234],"class_list":["post-69814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-northern-harriers","tag-circus-cyaneus","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-gray-ghost","tag-hunting-on-the-ground","tag-male","tag-northern-harrier"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/northern-harrier-1835b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-ia2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69814","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=69814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/northern-harrier-1835b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-1835b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n