{"id":80392,"date":"2020-01-07T05:28:26","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T12:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=80392"},"modified":"2020-01-07T05:45:58","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T12:45:58","slug":"male-american-kestrel-trying-to-balance-in-the-wind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/07\/male-american-kestrel-trying-to-balance-in-the-wind\/","title":{"rendered":"Male American Kestrel Trying To Balance In The Wind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good light and a cooperative bird is a combination I haven’t had in a very long time but it happened yesterday near Bear River MBR.<\/p>\n

After weeks of overcast skies and resulting cabin fever we finally had a sunny day yesterday so I headed to Bear River. Birds were far from abundant and most of the few good opportunities I had were foiled by poorly timed encounters with other vehicles that flushed my birds, malfunctioning camera gear and all around bad luck.<\/p>\n

So with my tail mostly between my legs I headed for home but not long before I got to the freeway a couple of unusually cooperative American Kestrels saved my morning.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 320, 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

This guy was the most cooperative of the two. I took more photos of him than I care to count (or cull). This shot may look like it was taken just before takeoff but that isn’t quite the case. He was actually struggling to maintain his balance in a strong breeze that kept him almost perpetually off balance so he was using his wings for stability.<\/p>\n

But only a second or two after this shot was taken he gave up and flew off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is the other male he was with. The two of them almost seemed to be frolicking together as they often moved in tandem from tree to tree. When this shot was taken he was clearly scanning the snowy ground below him for potential prey.<\/p>\n

I was a bit surprised to find them so closely and peacefully associated with each other because American Kestrels are known to be both solitary and territorial in winter.<\/p>\n

The fact that they were both males made it seem even more unusual. But what do I know, birds are often an enigma.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Good light and a cooperative bird is a combination I haven’t had in a very long time but it happened yesterday at Bear River MBR.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80393,"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":[340,338,334,395],"tags":[28,49,131,211,4901,311],"class_list":["post-80392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","tag-american-kestrel","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-male","tag-territoriality-in-winter","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/american-kestrel-1552b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-kUE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80392","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=80392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}