{"id":79614,"date":"2019-12-19T04:47:39","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T11:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=79614"},"modified":"2019-12-19T05:59:02","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T12:59:02","slug":"prairie-falcon-with-a-few-surprises-in-store-for-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/19\/prairie-falcon-with-a-few-surprises-in-store-for-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Prairie Falcon With A Few Surprises In Store For Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bird photographers never know what we’ll see in our photos that we didn’t notice in the field. My shots of this Prairie Falcon taken two days ago surprised me in more ways than one.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 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

“She” was far enough away that at first she seemed fairly relaxed, at least for a typically nervous and difficult to approach Prairie Falcon. I don’t see this species very often and it’s even more unusual for me to get one in my viewfinder so even though she had her back to me I was more than pleased.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 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

But soon her demeanor changed – it’s subtle but it can be seen in this slightly soft photo. I could tell from this body posture that for some reason she was becoming somewhat uncomfortable with my presence and would likely take off soon, probably away from me given the direction she was facing.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 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 that’s exactly what happened. Just what I need – another butt shot!<\/p>\n

Butt shot or not this photo allowed me to see for the first time that she had prey in her left foot, apparently the remains of a small mammal such as a vole.<\/p>\n

I looked at this shot several times on my computer at home before I noticed the piece of “meat” that at first I thought was flying through the air above and in front of her left foot. But closer inspection revealed that it was actually stuck to her outermost tail feather. The weight of that slightly bloody tidbit had actually pulled the feather down against her leg and away from the rest of her tail feathers.<\/p>\n

The first time I reviewed these photos I almost didn’t even look at the next shot in the burst because from the thumbnail preview I could see that she was very close to the left frame edge, it would be just another butt shot and I assumed she would be maddeningly out of focus. But the next day I forgot about that decision and loaded the image anyway.<\/p>\n

I’m glad I did because it revealed something else interesting and somewhat unusual.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 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

When the tail feather that had been weighed down by the piece of meat sprang back into place it flung the bloody tidbit forward and to the left – it can be seen above her head in this photo. I also thought it was interesting that we can see its shadow on her tail.<\/p>\n

Birds. We just never know what they’ll have in store for us.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Bird photographers never know what we’ll see in our photos that we didn’t notice in the field. My shots of this Prairie Falcon taken two days ago surprised me in more ways than one.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79615,"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":[5,334,392,371],"tags":[538,146,254,256,4872,2738,311,315],"class_list":["post-79614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-prairie-falcons","tag-falco-mexicanus","tag-flight","tag-prairie-falcon","tag-prey","tag-small-mammal","tag-takeoff","tag-utah-2","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/prairie-falcon-9438-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-kI6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79614","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=79614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}