{"id":96270,"date":"2021-03-20T05:48:42","date_gmt":"2021-03-20T11:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=96270"},"modified":"2021-03-20T06:01:53","modified_gmt":"2021-03-20T12:01:53","slug":"ferruginous-hawk-carrying-unusual-nesting-material-straight-at-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/20\/ferruginous-hawk-carrying-unusual-nesting-material-straight-at-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferruginous Hawk Carrying Unusual Nesting Material Straight At Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

I still don’t know what the nesting material was.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 1000, 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 early June of 2016 I watched as this Ferruginous Hawk foraged on the ground for nesting material in Montana’s Centennial Valley. In this species males deliver most materials to the nest so I’m going to refer to this bird as the male of the nesting pair..<\/p>\n

I saw him pick something up but he was in fairly tall grass so I couldn’t tell what it was. When he took off with it he came straight at me. As you can tell from my camera settings I was shooting in low light so I was lucky to get him as sharp as I did while he was in flight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 1000, 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

Soon after this shot was taken he veered off to my right so I lost light (what little there was of it) on his face and in his eye.<\/p>\n

Nearly six years later I’m still curious about what the nesting material was. It could be a piece of cow pie and we’re seeing the underside of it. Another guess is that it’s a hunk of moss. Ferruginous Hawks are commonly known to use cow dung in their nests but to me this looks a little more like moss. The Centennial Valley is cool, wet country in early June so moss seems fairly likely. Grass sod, which they’re known to use to line their nests, is yet another possibility.<\/p>\n

Ferruginous Hawk nesting habitat typically includes few trees so old sagebrush stems tend to be their primary nesting material but they’ll use what’s available. Prior to the decimation of the western bison herds one of their common nesting materials was old, bleached bison bones which were no problem for the largest and most powerful buteo in North America.<\/p>\n

Whatever this guy had in his beak it may not be unusual for Ferruginous Hawks but it looks at least a little out of the ordinary to me.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

I still don’t know what the nesting material was.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96271,"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":[334,377,1493,391],"tags":[531,555,138,220,5673],"class_list":["post-96270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ferruginous-hawks","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-buteo-regalis","tag-centennial-valley","tag-ferruginous-hawk","tag-montana-2","tag-mystery-nesting-material"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/ferruginous-hawk-0039-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-p2K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96270","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=96270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}