Falcons tend to have long toes but I thought those of this Merlin in flight (2nd image) were especially well seen. Merlins are bird-hunting specialists and they often snag their quarry right out of the air in flight so the bigger “net” they can throw the better.
Several weeks ago I presented this mystery to my readers because I was at a loss to figure it out myself. None of us found a logical explanation so on my latest Montana trip I decided to investigate a little more aggressively.
These two sibling juvenile Swainson’s Hawks were sorely lacking in patience as they waited for their parents to deliver voles to them.
For the past three days I’ve been able to observe a variety of different types of prey exchanges between adult and juvenile Swainson’s Hawks.
Believe me, this was a traumatic event for all concerned. Yesterday morning while driving west on the South Road in the Centennial Valley of southwest Montana we found this beautiful Barn Owl hanging from barbed wire along the side of the road. In its struggles to escape the owl had wrapped its wing around the sharp double barb that had penetrated its flesh to the point that it was bleeding and I couldn’t get the owl off the wire easily. First I cut both barbs off but I still couldn’t disentangle the owl so I had to cut out a 2′ piece of the wire with the owl still attached to it. Then we laid the owl on my pickup tailgate (partially wrapped in a towel) and began the extraction process. At that point a near-miracle occurred. A car drove up on the deserted road and it happened to be Bill West, Manager of nearby Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. Bill was on his way to a meeting in Dillon (roughly 80 miles away) and helped me to extract the owl from the wire. We wrapped it up in his jacket and Bill took it to the Humane Society in Dillon where arrangements were made to transport it to a rescue center in Bozeman. My next concern was the wire I had cut. “Cuttin’ fences” is serious business in cattle country – cows can get out and both people and cows can be killed in accidents when they do, not to mention the fact…
I don’t get many opportunities with accipiters but yesterday morning this Sharp-shinned Hawk gave me several.
This weasel may have been in a scrap and came out the loser but who knows, the “other guy” may look even worse.
This individual Short-eared Owl has had a significant effect on the focus of my life as a bird photographer and nature lover.
These two images demonstrate how dramatically shutter speed can change in different lighting conditions when you’re shooting in aperture priority.
I don’t post images of these two species as often as I should. Both are common in my area and such large birds are relatively easy to photograph in flight so I hope the reason I’ve largely ignored them has nothing to do with snobbishness on my part.
