{"id":91816,"date":"2020-11-28T05:31:21","date_gmt":"2020-11-28T12:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=91816"},"modified":"2020-11-28T07:02:42","modified_gmt":"2020-11-28T14:02:42","slug":"further-evidence-that-kestrels-become-sticky-in-cold-weather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/28\/further-evidence-that-kestrels-become-sticky-in-cold-weather\/","title":{"rendered":"Further Evidence That Kestrels Become ‘Sticky’ In Cold Weather"},"content":{"rendered":"

American Kestrels are notoriously difficult to approach but bring on the cold and sometimes I think they must have glue on their feet.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, 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

Three days ago and only minutes after sunrise I found this handsome male American Kestrel on an unattractive painted metal fence post. It was a very cold morning with temps in the high teens so after a long frigid night I believe his only interest at the time was to warm up in the rays of the rising sun. I approached him slowly in my pickup and very uncharacteristic of kestrels he allowed me to get as close as I wanted\/needed to.<\/p>\n

I’m convinced this wasn’t a hunting perch, at least not at first. As far as I could tell he wasn’t scanning for prey and he never seemed to be in an alert posture, even with me so close.<\/p>\n

The poor guy was just lethargic and cold.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, 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

For the longest time he wouldn’t even give me any variety in poses. Eventually I finally caught him in a head turn and later still a….<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, 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

quick yawn.<\/p>\n

After about twenty minutes he finally started preening but I had poor luck getting light in his eye during the process so I haven’t included any of those photos.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, 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 I did manage to get light in his eye during this post-preening rouse.<\/p>\n

When all was said and done I spent 33 minutes up close and personal with this guy and took almost 300 photos of him.<\/p>\n

Anyone with significant experience with kestrels knows how difficult they usually are to get close to. If there are two things that kestrels are uncomfortable with it’s humans close to them and humans at eye level with them but this male made a double exception for me (I was at almost perfect eye level with him). In my mind I have no doubt that he did so because of the bitter cold.<\/p>\n

I’ve made the same claim about kestrels many times in the past and this guy only reinforced my belief. This reaction to cold isn’t unique to kestrels but it seems to be amplified in them.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Postscript:<\/p>\n

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On that same morning an hour and 18 minutes after I first approached the male I found this female kestrel on a perch I like better. But by then it had warmed up significantly so she was very nervous as I tried to approach her. She flew off before I got anywhere near as close as I’d been to the male.<\/p>\n

My experience with her is only anecdotal evidence of my ‘theory’ but I still take it as evidence.<\/p>\n

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

American Kestrels are notoriously difficult to approach but bring on the cold and sometimes I think they must have glue on their feet.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91817,"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":[340,6,334,2782,395],"tags":[28,5470,4987,5469,131,1008,137,211,994],"class_list":["post-91816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-miscellaneous","tag-american-kestrel","tag-anecdotal-evidence","tag-are-birds-born","tag-are-kestrels-more-approachable-when-its-cold","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-female","tag-male","tag-rouse"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/american-kestrel-1073-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-nSU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91816","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=91816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}