Northern Harrier Drop

Gallery: AvianPosted February 11, 2018131 views5 comments

Canon EOS 1D Mark 2 600mm IS 1/2500 sec F 6.3
This is one of the most spectacular events in the world of North American birds. Not more than three days after taking their first flight, juveniles chase their father for a meal over an open prairie of Michigan's Eastern Upper Peninsula. The winner is about to catch the prize – a nestling bird captured in the early morning and dropped in mid-air by the white/gray colored adult male. He appeared just over the tree line directly in front of me, and swooped down. His offspring waited in the tall grasses, but upon his arrival they flew up, racing to be the one to receive the prize. During the drop another sibling complains, close on the winner’s tail. The unfed juvenile accepted the result and had to wait for its meal, which arrived about 30 minutes afterward from mom. This is the only bird in North America other than the Peregrine Falcon to feed its young by dropping prey in mid-air. The male will also feed the female like this when she is incubating eggs.

Comments

5 comments

Comment posted by Kathy Snead on February 12, 2018 at 7:10 AM

Paul
What a fantastic capture and thank you for the explanation. Everything seems sharp on my screen. If it were mine I would change the crop a bit to put more space in front of the birds. Also, it would help is you could play with the background a bit to get more separation between the birds and the BG. Perhaps darken it, play with luminosity and saturation in the greens and perhaps use the blur tool a bit.

Registered on April 6, 2017, 104 Posts, 397 Comments

Comment posted by Debapratim Saha on February 12, 2018 at 10:55 AM

Amazing action image and the studied behavioral biology narrated so well.

Registered on February 4, 2018, 26 Posts, 101 Comments

Comment posted by Dennis Plank on February 12, 2018 at 1:27 PM

Very cool action and an unusual situation to catch. There was a former NPNer who managed to catch a sequence of the male and female exchanging food, but I've never seen or heard of this behavior. Well done, Paul.

Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments

Comment posted by David Schoen on February 12, 2018 at 2:23 PM

Excellent capture and display of behaviors in these Northern Harriers. Just catching this had to be very difficult. Is this a large crop? The detail of the birds in this image does seem a little soft to me but catching this behavior makes up for it. I imagine one gets very few opportunities to actually shoot something like this.

Registered on November 6, 2006, 1213 Posts, 4587 Comments

Comment posted by Paul Rossi on February 12, 2018 at 11:56 PM

David, this is a crop from a horizontal image. The male dropping prey is sharp but the juvenile about to catch the nestling bird is a little out of focus and the one behind that is further out of focus. This was a very difficult capture because it happened so close to the trees behind the scene - the auto-focus was trying to focus on the trees. When I had good focus I hit the shutter button, but an instant before I could the male flared and moved toward the top of the frame while dropping prey, so I only got one shot off, and then the camera focused on the trees. Lucky shot. I could not have more depth of field because I have an older Canon EOS 1D Mark 2 which is grainy after ISO 400, and I had to have 1/2500 sec (manually set) to capture the action.

Registered on February 8, 2018, 48 Posts, 19 Comments