{"id":87135,"date":"2020-07-08T05:50:18","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T11:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=87135"},"modified":"2020-07-08T05:56:20","modified_gmt":"2020-07-08T11:56:20","slug":"a-two-attack-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/08\/a-two-attack-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"A Two Attack Morning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kingfisher vs kingfisher and American Robin vs Red-tailed Hawk.<\/p>\n

Birds attacking other birds is a fairly common phenomenon in nature but it’s unusual for me to actually photograph either the victim or the aggressor during the encounter, in part because birds are so very fast and unpredictable and human reflexes are relatively slow. But two days ago in the mountains it happened twice and I was able to capture at least part of each attack.<\/p>\n

Due to a variety of circumstances and conditions many off the following photos are of documentary quality only.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This male kingfisher was minding his own business as I watched him through my lens when I suddenly heard the loud and excited calls of another kingfisher coming in. I had no idea what might be about to happen but I began to fire off a long burst just in case.<\/p>\n

During the burst I could see very little of what I was photographing because my shutter curtain was repeatedly blocking my view but I could hear two loud and apparently angry kingfishers. These first five photos are sequential shots in the burst with no skips.<\/p>\n

Here we see the beginning of his reaction to the approach of the second kingfisher.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He raised his wings vertically in a pose that I’ve never photographed a kingfisher in before and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

used his stubby little legs and feet to push off of his perch backwards.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In an effort to avoid the incoming kingfisher his…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

lightning-quick dive was almost perfectly vertical as he exited the frame.<\/p>\n

He landed on another nearby perch and it all happened so fast I never did see the attacking kingfisher. There was a juvenile female kingfisher perched nearby but I don’t believe she ever left her perch.<\/p>\n

An entire family of kingfishers, including several juveniles, has been hanging out in this area so the aggressor could have been one of them or another kingfisher that was challenging this male for fishing rights. I just don’t know but I’m confident that the aggressor was another kingfisher because I could hear both of them calling loudly and excitedly during the attack.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Much later in the morning as I was about to head home I photographed another aggressive encounter between birds but this time it involved two different species.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This Red-tailed Hawk was far away but I kept my lens on ‘him’ anyway because I thought he might take off. At first I didn’t notice the robin behind him and to the right but the robin was calling so loudly and excitedly it soon became obvious that it was there and it was far from happy about the hawk’s presence.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it had a nest or recently fledged youngsters nearby.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In any case the robin attacked the red-tail by swooping in very close to him when the hawk wasn’t looking.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

At the last second the robin veered off to the right as the hawk reacted to the attack but he never left his perch.<\/p>\n

I have other photos as the robin was approaching the hawk but they’re dreadfully soft because I flinched at the beginning of the attack – yet another rookie mistake on my part. At this focal length (effectively 1120 mm) an unstable lens trained on a far-away stationary subject (the hawk) is a recipe for soft shots.<\/p>\n

In this particular case the recipe turned out perfectly but my photos sure as hell didn’t.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Kingfisher vs kingfisher and American Robin vs Red-tailed Hawk.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87143,"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":[1734,2853,6,334,394,450],"tags":[5228,1735,1405,2329,451],"class_list":["post-87135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-robin","category-belted-kingfishers","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-aggressive-encounters","tag-american-robin-2","tag-attack","tag-belted-kingfisher","tag-red-tailed-hawk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/red-tailed-hawk-7985-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mFp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87135","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=87135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}