{"id":92288,"date":"2020-12-11T06:36:36","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T13:36:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=92288"},"modified":"2020-12-11T08:19:14","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T15:19:14","slug":"adult-male-northern-harrier-in-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/11\/adult-male-northern-harrier-in-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Adult Male Northern Harrier In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

And why they’re often called ‘Gray Ghosts’.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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 I managed to keep this adult male Northern Harrier in my crosshairs for long enough to get about a half dozen shots before he veered off. But as is often the case, at least with me, not all of them were sharp. Here I’m presenting three consecutive shots in the burst, the three photos I liked best.<\/p>\n

The horizontal band of color behind the bird is phragmites in the distant background with standing water below. I like this wing position but he was looking slightly away from me.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

One tenth of a second later he’d gained a couple of inches in elevation and was beginning to look more my way.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

In the next shot I got my best eye contact but the harrier isn’t quite as sharp as he is in the previous two images.<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

Northern Harriers are strongly sexually dimorphic, meaning adult males and females look very different from each other. The difference is so great in Northern Harriers the untrained observer often assumes the males and females are different species. This is an adult female, as you can see the difference is dramatic. Males are also about 50% smaller than females.<\/p>\n

To make it even more confusing juveniles of both sexes resemble adult females, although there are a few relatively minor differences.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

I posted this photo of a harrier attacking a perched Red-tailed Hawk two days ago. Notice the harrier’s gray central tail feather. This is an immature male just beginning to transition into adult male plumage. The central feather is part of his developing adult male plumage while the rest of them are still juvenile feathers.<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

More of this immature male’s tail feathers are gray so he’s further along in his transition to adult male plumage than the previous bird is. It won’t be long until this bird looks like the adult male in my first three photos above.<\/p>\n

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\"Northern<\/p>\n

Here’s a nearly adult male. His transition to adult male plumage is nearing completion. I added this photo after I’d published today’s post.<\/p>\n

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So to the untrained eye immature harriers of both sexes and adult females all look pretty much alike (although there are some relatively minor differences) and only adult males are gray and white.<\/p>\n

That’s a big part of the reason adult males are often referred to as ‘Gray Ghosts’ – they’re gray instead of brown and they’re a fairly small part of the overall population of Northern Harriers so it’s relatively uncommon to see them.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

And why they’re often called ‘Gray Ghosts’.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92293,"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":[334,2782,341],"tags":[5465,146,211,234,5501,5500],"class_list":["post-92288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-northern-harriers","tag-circus-hudsonius","tag-flight","tag-male","tag-northern-harrier","tag-transitioning-into-adult-male-plumage","tag-why-are-males-called-gray-ghosts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/northern-harrier-3535b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-o0w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92288","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=92288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}