{"id":92998,"date":"2020-12-27T05:42:20","date_gmt":"2020-12-27T12:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=92998"},"modified":"2020-12-27T12:57:13","modified_gmt":"2020-12-27T19:57:13","slug":"male-american-kestrel-taking-requests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/27\/male-american-kestrel-taking-requests\/","title":{"rendered":"Male American Kestrel Taking Requests"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than most birds kestrels are known for listening to the beat of their own personal drummer. So on Christmas morning I was flabbergasted when this male immediately filled my stated request when asked.<\/p>\n

I was just beginning to drive across one of the two small bridges at Farmington Bay WMA when I noticed him perched on my right on one of the many metal and wooden posts in front of the bridge. He was extremely close and at eye level but he was on the wrong damn side of the bridge where I could only see him through the far right corner of my windshield and on that side he was back lit anyway. The bridge was too narrow and confining for me to maneuver my pickup for a shooting angle on him and even if I could the light angle would have been simply awful.<\/p>\n

As I inched forward I kept getting closer and closer to him and he didn’t fly off so out of extreme frustration I pointed with my finger at another very close post on the ‘good’ side of the bridge on my left and loudly said to him “C’mon bird, fly over to that<\/em> post!”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/9, ISO 400, 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

And immediately that’s exactly what he did. Here he’s on the exact post (out of several others, most of which are ugly yellow metal posts) I had been pointing at just a few seconds earlier.<\/p>\n

But I had to get off the bridge for a car coming up slowly behind me so I pulled a few feet forward and off the right side of the road which gave me an even better light angle. But now I was too close for him to fit comfortably in the frame while I was shooting horizontally so I had to shoot vertically which I really, really don’t like to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

He never did turn around on his perch or even look directly back at me before he flew off after prey but I got excellent plumage detail in good light and we can at least see his face. But perhaps the most exciting thing about the encounter was just being this close to a wild kestrel at eye level.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Given the circumstances the only significant mistake I made was not asking him to turn around on his new perch and face me. Next time I’ll make that request.<\/p>\n

I might even say please.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

More than most birds kestrels are known for listening to the beat of their own personal drummer. So on Christmas morning I was flabbergasted when this male immediately filled my stated request when asked.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92999,"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":[28,5536,131,1008,211],"class_list":["post-92998","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-bridge","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-male"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/american-kestrel-4895-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-obY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92998","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=92998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}