{"id":9043,"date":"2012-11-11T17:54:39","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T00:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=9043"},"modified":"2015-09-21T05:56:20","modified_gmt":"2015-09-21T11:56:20","slug":"an-incredible-experience-with-a-prairie-falcon-and-a-hapless-duck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/11\/an-incredible-experience-with-a-prairie-falcon-and-a-hapless-duck\/","title":{"rendered":"An Incredible Experience With A Prairie Falcon And A Hapless Duck"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning on Antelope Island was a photographic bust – heavy snow coming down most of the time\u00a0and no light to speak of.\u00a0 So finally, after several hours of hoping the clouds would clear,\u00a0we put\u00a0our tails between\u00a0our legs and headed for home.\u00a0 Talk about perfect timing!<\/p>\n

We’d traversed about half the causeway when the clouds parted, light\u00a0blossomed\u00a0and a serendipitous\u00a0adult Prairie Falcon appeared, hunting for ducks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"northern<\/p>\n

The falcon ambushed this male Northern Shoveler just as I was getting my pickup in position, so I missed that shot but this one was taken within a second or two of the strike.\u00a0 The duck is bleeding heavily.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"northern<\/p>\n

It struggled for a minute or so, and then died in the water.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"northern<\/p>\n

After the\u00a0attack, the\u00a0falcon would perch along the causeway for a short period, then take off and fly over the duck.\u00a0 This was done repeatedly.\u00a0\u00a0 With my 500mm plus tc I could never get both the duck and the falcon in the image – this is as close as I came.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Here, the falcon is perched to watch the duck out on the water.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I had a difficult time locking focus on the falcon as it buzzed the duck because the textured water background was so close to the bird.\u00a0 I kept getting sharp shots of water and a blurry bird. \u00a0This is one of the few relatively sharp shots of the\u00a0falcon in flight that I was able to get.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO\u00a0640, 500\u00a0f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The falcon kept perching closer and closer to the duck as the wind and waves washed the Shoveler into the shore.\u00a0 I’m fairly convinced the falcon was waiting for just that to happen, so it didn’t have to pluck it out of the water and fly with it.<\/p>\n

As all this was going on, noisy traffic (the road was wet) kept going by, which obviously made the bird nervous but it wasn’t going to give up on its meal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4,\u00a01.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Here, the falcon is approaching the Shoveler, which by now has washed up onto the shore.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4,\u00a01.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0And the falcon finally claims its prize.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4,\u00a01.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I suspect this to be the infamous “death bite” of the falcon.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0All falcon species\u00a0have a tooth-like projection on their upper mandible, called the “falcon tooth” or tomial tooth, that fits into a notch on the lower\u00a0mandible, which they use to bite the spinal cord to render their prey helpless.\u00a0 This duck was already dead, but\u00a0I wonder if it might be an instinctive behavior to\u00a0make the bite anyway.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0In this shot, the\u00a0falcon has begun to pluck the feathers on the back of the neck of the duck.\u00a0 I was surprised that the muscles of the neck were the first parts of the duck that were consumed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The waves kept washing over the Shoveler as the falcon tried to eat, so to avoid\u00a0them the falcon began to drag the duck further onto the shore…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

which required a lot of effort.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0For a split second, the falcon looked directly at me as it was dragging its prey.\u00a0 I was glad to get full eye contact with this wing spread.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The falcon really worked over that neck!\u00a0 Once the feathers there were all plucked it began to\u00a0seriously enjoy the meal.\u00a0 The bite the bird is about to swallow was just removed from the neck – you can see where it was taken from.<\/p>\n

Caution – this last shot is a little gruesome so some may wish to avoid scrolling further.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1250, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

By this time the sun has disappeared for good behind some dark clouds and the light is gone but I wanted to show you how serious these birds are about\u00a0rejecting the intestines of their prey – something I’ve seen, and documented, many\u00a0 times – here<\/a>, \u00a0here<\/a>, here<\/a>\u00a0and here<\/a>.\u00a0 All these coiled, reddish-orange tubes are intestines that the falcon has very deliberately removed and deposited in front of the duck.<\/p>\n

My experience with this Prairie Falcon is one I won’t soon forget. What an incredible encounter!<\/p>\n

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

This morning on Antelope Island was a photographic bust – heavy snow coming down most of the time\u00a0and no light to speak of.\u00a0 So finally, after several hours of hoping the clouds would clear,\u00a0we put\u00a0our tails between\u00a0our legs and headed for home.\u00a0 Talk about perfect timing! We’d traversed about half the causeway when the clouds parted, light\u00a0blossomed\u00a0and a serendipitous\u00a0adult Prairie Falcon appeared, hunting for ducks.   The falcon ambushed this male Northern Shoveler just as I was getting my pickup in position, so I missed that shot but this one was taken within a second or two of the strike.\u00a0 The duck is bleeding heavily.     It struggled for a minute or so, and then died in the water.     After the\u00a0attack, the\u00a0falcon would perch along the causeway for a short period, then take off and fly over the duck.\u00a0 This was done repeatedly.\u00a0\u00a0 With my 500mm plus tc I could never get both the duck and the falcon in the image – this is as close as I came.     \u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in Here, the falcon is perched to watch the duck out on the water.     \u00a01\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in I had a difficult time locking focus on the falcon as it buzzed the duck because the textured water background was so close to the bird.\u00a0 I kept getting sharp shots of…<\/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":[4,334,392,371],"tags":[31,539,538,133,970,971,584,254,306],"class_list":["post-9043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-prairie-falcons","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-causeway","tag-falco-mexicanus","tag-falcon-tooth","tag-intestine-avoidance","tag-intestine-rejection","tag-northern-shoveler","tag-prairie-falcon","tag-tomial-tooth"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-2lR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9043","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=9043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}