{"id":81101,"date":"2020-01-27T06:18:07","date_gmt":"2020-01-27T13:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=81101"},"modified":"2020-01-27T06:30:35","modified_gmt":"2020-01-27T13:30:35","slug":"photographing-an-american-kestrel-and-a-friend-in-a-near-blizzard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/27\/photographing-an-american-kestrel-and-a-friend-in-a-near-blizzard\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographing An American Kestrel (and a friend) In A Near-blizzard"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it’s snowing this hard times are tough for both critters and photographers.<\/p>\n

Four years ago this week I was scheduled to show some of our local birding spots to a good friend and bird photographer from out of state but the weather didn’t cooperate. We went anyway and below are some of the results.<\/p>\n

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1\/1000, f\/8, ISO 1000, 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

At times Farmington Bay WMA was in near-whiteout conditions. Just staying on the road and out of the canals was an accomplishment so finding birds was even more of a challenge. Getting decent shots was virtually impossible. The flip side was that the weather made the birds we did find “stickier” than usual so several American Kestrels allowed us to get close.<\/p>\n

This male kestrel was enjoying his midday meal of vole on top of a signpost. Even focusing on him through the falling snow was extremely difficult. I remember trying to use manual focus but I believe this shot was taken using autofocus.<\/p>\n

I think those two little vole feet sticking out of the snow are particularly poignant.<\/p>\n

For obvious reasons none of my shots that morning, including this one, were very good but they do document some of the difficulties wildlife must overcome in order to survive in winter. The snow on the ground was so thick I have no idea how this diminutive falcon was able to find the vole in the first place, much less catch it. But once he had it he was determined to get a warm meal in his belly which is probably why he allowed me to get close.<\/p>\n

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Conditions were tough for photographers too. This is my friend Dave Sparks<\/a> out for a stroll with his camera in the snowstorm. The photo was taken shortly after I took the kestrel shot. Dave lived in Florida at the time so I imagine this was a bit of a shock for him. But he’s photographed birds in colder places, including Yellowstone in winter and Antarctica, so he toughed it out with nary a complaint.<\/p>\n

I wish we had snow like this now but around here it looks more like March than the end of January and it has for most of the winter. Day after day we have thick clouds but relatively warm temperatures and no snow, or so little it’s gone in a virtual heartbeat.<\/p>\n

Give ‘m hell, Greta Thunberg!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

When it’s snowing this hard times are tough for both critters and photographers.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81102,"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":[340,334,8,2782,392],"tags":[28,1641,3643,131,1008,2411,4925,256,2356,311,315],"class_list":["post-81101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-american-kestrel","tag-climate-change","tag-david-sparks","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-global-warming","tag-greta-thunberg","tag-prey","tag-snowstorm","tag-utah-2","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/american-kestrel-0815-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-l65","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81101","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=81101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}