{"id":9604,"date":"2012-11-29T17:56:22","date_gmt":"2012-11-30T00:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=9604"},"modified":"2012-11-30T06:29:22","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T13:29:22","slug":"rough-legged-hawk-playing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/29\/rough-legged-hawk-playing\/","title":{"rendered":"Rough-legged Hawk “Playing”"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is about behavior.\u00a0 Please don’t expect high quality images…<\/p>\n

Last March I found this juvenile (I believe) Rough-legged Hawk along the Antelope Island causeway on a cold morning after a light snowfall.\u00a0 It was perched on a windrow of debris consisting mostly of piles of old brine fly pupae casings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough<\/p>\n

For a while the bird seemed content to simply rest and watch me.\u00a0\u00a0 But soon it apparently got bored…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough<\/p>\n

and walked about two feet to my right to investigate a clump of fly casings (red arrow) that had been cemented together by melting snow that had re-frozen during the night.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough<\/p>\n

The hawk reached over to grasp the clump with its talons…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough<\/p>\n

retrieved the clump,…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough<\/p>\n

transferred it to its beak and then instantly tossed it to the ground.\u00a0 I\u00a0assumed that was that, figuring the bird had thought it might be something edible, then discarded it for good when it wasn’t.\u00a0 But that wasn’t what happened.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough<\/p>\n

The hawk grabbed the clump with its talons once again…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough<\/p>\n

and then seemed to contemplate for a few seconds about just what to do next.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough<\/p>\n

Which turned out to be something like\u00a0“give the clump a toss and see where it lands”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough<\/p>\n

The hawk immediately started walking over to where the clump had landed behind the mound of\u00a0fly casings, where it can’t be seen\u00a0in this image.\u00a0 It used its wings for a little more stability as it negotiated the hill of debris.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"rough<\/p>\n

After picking it up, the hawk flew off with its “toy”.\u00a0 I lost focus on the bird as it did so but wanted to include the image so that you could see that the hawk did take the clump along when it left.<\/p>\n

I’m certainly no\u00a0animal behaviorist but I’m fairly convinced that what I saw was “play”.\u00a0 Play in animals is well documented, including in\u00a0many bird species.\u00a0 In fact, Birds of North America Online, out of Cornell University, has a\u00a0behavior category they label “play” for many of the species they cover on their website.\u00a0 For some of those species, several types of play have been well documented.\u00a0 But all they say about play\u00a0in Rough-legged Hawks is “Group of birds soared, dived, and \u201cplayed tag\u201d in twos and threes in n. Quebec (Palmer 1988<\/a>).”\u00a0<\/em> I was disappointed to not find more.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen many raptors seeming to play with each other in the air – with their own species and even differing species but this is the first time I’ve (apparently)\u00a0seen play on the ground by a raptor.\u00a0 Motivations for such behaviors are, of course, difficult to assign\u00a0but I’ll tell you this.\u00a0 Whatever it was, I was absolutely fascinated and intrigued\u00a0by what I saw that early March morning.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – I’m\u00a0curious to know of any apparent “play” among birds that any of my readers may have observed, raptors or non-raptors.\u00a0 And the more I think about that,\u00a0 the more curious I become –\u00a0especially knowing how much experience many of you have with birds…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is about behavior.\u00a0 Please don’t expect high quality images… Last March I found this juvenile (I believe) Rough-legged Hawk along the Antelope Island causeway on a cold morning after a light snowfall.\u00a0 It was perched on a windrow of debris consisting mostly of piles of old brine fly pupae casings.   For a while the bird seemed content to simply rest and watch me.\u00a0\u00a0 But soon it apparently got bored…     and walked about two feet to my right to investigate a clump of fly casings (red arrow) that had been cemented together by melting snow that had re-frozen during the night.     The hawk reached over to grasp the clump with its talons…     retrieved the clump,…     transferred it to its beak and then instantly tossed it to the ground.\u00a0 I\u00a0assumed that was that, figuring the bird had thought it might be something edible, then discarded it for good when it wasn’t.\u00a0 But that wasn’t what happened.     The hawk grabbed the clump with its talons once again…     and then seemed to contemplate for a few seconds about just what to do next.     Which turned out to be something like\u00a0“give the clump a toss and see where it lands”.     The hawk immediately started walking over to where the clump had landed behind the mound of\u00a0fly casings, where it can’t be seen\u00a0in this image.\u00a0 It used its wings for a little more stability as it negotiated the hill of debris.  …<\/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":[4,5,334,1004,395,358],"tags":[31,50,1000,534,539,847,1001,999,269],"class_list":["post-9604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-behaviors","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-falconry-2","category-miscellaneous","category-rough-legged-hawks","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-behavior","tag-brine-fly-pupae-casing","tag-buteo-lagopus","tag-causeway","tag-falconry","tag-karl-lorenz","tag-play","tag-rough-legged-hawk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-2uU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9604","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=9604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}