{"id":7270,"date":"2012-08-26T07:31:23","date_gmt":"2012-08-26T13:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=7270"},"modified":"2012-09-01T16:12:59","modified_gmt":"2012-09-01T22:12:59","slug":"swainsons-hawk-regurgitating-pellets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/26\/swainsons-hawk-regurgitating-pellets\/","title":{"rendered":"Swainson’s Hawk Regurgitating Pellets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Western Montana has been awash in Swainson’s Hawks this summer.\u00a0 From the Canadian border (Glacier County) to the southern border with Idaho (Beaverhead County) I found them in significantly larger numbers than I have seen in previous summers.\u00a0 I hope this very unscientific observation is accurate and that it\u00a0bodes them well as a species\u00a0because\u00a0their numbers have been declining to the point where they are listed as a Species of Special Concern in several western states.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainsons<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0I found this handsome juvenile this past week along a county road\u00a0in Beaverhead County.\u00a0 At first it was very relaxed and assumed this clenched fist pose that is so typical of many buteo species when they’re at ease and resting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainsons<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

But soon it began to arch its neck and I recognized that it was about to attempt to expel a pellet.\u00a0 I had already taken my tc off in anticipation of\u00a0take-off so I decided to leave it off because so often in the past I’ve missed the falling pellet as it dropped out\u00a0of\u00a0frame at the bottom.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainsons<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

Then, with the nictitating membrane pulled over the eye, the bird began to retch.<\/p>\n

These few images showing pellet ejection may give the viewer the impression that it all happened very quickly.\u00a0 It didn’t.\u00a0 From beginning to end the whole process took over four minutes.\u00a0\u00a0During that time there\u00a0were alternating periods of retching and resting and it didn’t look to be a particularly pleasant experience for the hawk.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainsons<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0There was no light in the eye\u00a0in many of my images but I wanted to include a shot with the\u00a0bird in this posture\u00a0to show the effort required to expel the pellet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainsons<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

Here the pellet begins to emerge.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainsons<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

As the first pellet clears the beak you can see that there’s a second pellet lined up\u00a0right behind it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainsons<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The first pellet begins to drop to the ground.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainsons<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

But the larger second pellet is being a little stubborn.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainsons<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Then the second pellet finally emerges…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainsons<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0and falls to the ground.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainsons<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Soon after the last pellet was ejected the hawk turned on the perch and gave me a nice wing stretch – almost as if to demonstrate its relief that the whole unpleasant experience was now in the past.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainsons<\/p>\n

When the hawk flew off I retrieved both pellets – still wet and warm.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainsons<\/p>\n

When I got home a few days later I carefully dissected both pellets.\u00a0 They consisted almost entirely of small mammal fur (meadow\u00a0voles?) with only\u00a0four small bones (ribs?) and two\u00a0tiny bone fragments along with a few stray\u00a0grass\u00a0stems.\u00a0 There were no chitonous insect exoskeletons to be found, which surprised me.\u00a0 I know that grasshoppers form a major part of their diet and in past years I had observed these birds eating grasshoppers in the same area.\u00a0 This year there were grasshoppers galore where I found this bird so I had assumed it was primarily eating Orthopterans.<\/p>\n

So I did a little research.\u00a0 It turns out that Swainson’s Hawks do eat mostly insects, especially grasshoppers, for\u00a0much of the year but during breeding season they\u00a0switch their diet to\u00a0rodents, rabbits and reptiles.\u00a0 Another reminder to me of the potential pitfalls of making assumptions…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Western Montana has been awash in Swainson’s Hawks this summer.\u00a0 From the Canadian border (Glacier County) to the southern border with Idaho (Beaverhead County) I found them in significantly larger numbers than I have seen in previous summers.\u00a0 I hope this very unscientific observation is accurate and that it\u00a0bodes them well as a species\u00a0because\u00a0their numbers have been declining to the point where they are listed as a Species of Special Concern in several western states.   \u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4 \u00a0I found this handsome juvenile this past week along a county road\u00a0in Beaverhead County.\u00a0 At first it was very relaxed and assumed this clenched fist pose that is so typical of many buteo species when they’re at ease and resting.     \u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4 But soon it began to arch its neck and I recognized that it was about to attempt to expel a pellet.\u00a0 I had already taken my tc off in anticipation of\u00a0take-off so I decided to leave it off because so often in the past I’ve missed the falling pellet as it dropped out\u00a0of\u00a0frame at the bottom.     \u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4 Then, with the nictitating membrane pulled over the eye, the bird began to retch. These few images showing pellet ejection may give the viewer the impression that it all happened very quickly.\u00a0 It didn’t.\u00a0 From beginning to end the whole process took over four minutes.\u00a0\u00a0During that time there\u00a0were alternating periods of retching and resting and it didn’t look to be a…<\/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":[334,395,360,645],"tags":[779,577,647,107,816,824,190,220,515,825,245,263,758,646,315,809],"class_list":["post-7270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-beaverhead-county","tag-buteo","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-diet","tag-glacier-county","tag-grasshopper","tag-juvenile","tag-montana-2","tag-nictitating-membrane","tag-orthoptera","tag-pellet","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-species-of-special-concern","tag-swainsons-hawk","tag-vole","tag-wing-stretch"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-1Tg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7270","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=7270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}