{"id":100094,"date":"2021-07-09T06:08:10","date_gmt":"2021-07-09T12:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=100094"},"modified":"2021-07-09T06:08:10","modified_gmt":"2021-07-09T12:08:10","slug":"sopping-wet-and-preening-yellow-warbler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/09\/sopping-wet-and-preening-yellow-warbler\/","title":{"rendered":"Sopping Wet And Preening Yellow Warbler"},"content":{"rendered":"

Incredibly quick preening motions frozen in time by very fast shutter speeds.<\/p>\n

Just over a week ago in the mountains I took several hundred photos of a very wet male Yellow Warbler preening after his bath. His preening actions were so fast they were just a blur to the naked eye so while I was reviewing my photos it was like a treasure hunt as I looked for interesting poses that I had no idea I’d captured. These are some of the poses I liked best, in no particular order.<\/p>\n

Image techs for most of these photos are in the range of\u00a01\/5000 – 1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender<\/em>. Without the very fast shutter speed I was able to achieve in the good light most of these photos would have been a blurry mess.<\/p>\n

Five days ago I posted a single photo of this same warbler that allowed a good look at his preen gland<\/a><\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

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He had just bathed in the stream below and to the right of this perch. I had a narrow window of view of him through all the branches but in most of my shots the bird was unobstructed, or close to it.<\/p>\n

Almost immediately he started erecting his wet feathers, shaking, preening and contorting his body into interesting and even humorous poses.<\/p>\n

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In this pose I thought he looked a little indignant that I wasn’t allowing him to attend to his toilette in private.<\/p>\n

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His tail was often twisted to the side to allow him access to his preen gland at the base of his rump.<\/p>\n

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Here he’d been grooming his tail but I couldn’t see his eye until immediately after he’d released one of his tail feathers.<\/p>\n

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This looks a little like a wing stretch but it was much quicker than a stretch. He was just throwing his feathers and body parts around in an effort to dry them off.<\/p>\n

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Even his ‘armpits’ needed attention, in this case accessed from behind. I envy his flexible neck.<\/p>\n

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Here he’s rezipping the hooks that hold the barbules of some of some of his wing feathers together, essentially restoring the integrity and even the shape of each feather.<\/p>\n

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I like this wing position and the resulting shadows across his breast. Great eye contact and good light on his face are a bonus.<\/p>\n

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He was often shaking and contorting so violently he seemed to be unable to control where his body parts went.<\/p>\n

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This time he almost fell off his perch. There’s no light in his eye but I had to include the photo anyway.<\/p>\n

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Just another interesting pose.<\/p>\n

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I almost didn’t include this shot because we see very little of his head. But closer inspection revealed…<\/p>\n

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something humans rarely see in such a tiny bird. Here the tip of his beak is peaking between the feathers as it’s being drawn down the length of one of his secondaries while he’s rezipping its hooks. It’s amazing how efficient these incredibly fast movements can be in repairing and grooming feathers.<\/p>\n

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I’m hearing what are probably warbler chicks in the willows near where I photographed this male so I suspect his bathing and grooming break was brief before he had to go back to work.<\/p>\n

I hope he enjoyed his respite. I thoroughly enjoyed photographing it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Incredibly quick preening motions frozen in time by very fast shutter speeds.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100102,"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":[393,334,395,3486],"tags":[4747,46,168,255,2589,311,2588],"class_list":["post-100094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bathing-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-yellow-warbler","tag-adult-male","tag-bath","tag-grooming","tag-preening","tag-setophaga-petechia","tag-utah-2","tag-yellow-warbler"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/yellow-warbler-5899-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-q2q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100094","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=100094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}