{"id":100578,"date":"2021-07-23T05:50:33","date_gmt":"2021-07-23T11:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=100578"},"modified":"2021-07-23T17:27:08","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T23:27:08","slug":"male-cassins-finch-in-a-conifer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/23\/male-cassins-finch-in-a-conifer\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Cassin’s Finch In A Conifer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christmas colors in July.<\/span><\/p>\n

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1\/1000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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

I have very few opportunities with Cassin’s Finches so I was delighted to photograph this male five summers ago during a camping trip to Montana. Their typical habitat during the breeding season is “open coniferous forests of interior western mountains” so this setting is just about perfect for the species and I think it’s a very attractive setting to boot.<\/p>\n

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1\/1000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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

Something in the tree caught his attention so in an attempt to see it he stretched out as far as he could. The conifer needles behind him provide a measuring stick for how far he was able to stretch and his pose allowed me to crop differently to include the conifer twig at upper right. That crop was also a bit of a stretch but I couldn’t see cutting the twig off.<\/p>\n

Folks in some other parts of North America see the very similar Purple Finch instead of the Cassin’s Finch. I once read that Roger Tory Peterson famously described the Purple Finch as a “sparrow dipped in raspberry juice” and I think that description fits the Cassin’s Finch almost as well – to the point that Peterson’s words always come to mind when I see a male Cassin’s.<\/p>\n

Maybe that’s partly because I love raspberries so much. In fact I’ll be having raspberry preserves on toast as part of my breakfast this morning. Just like I did yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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PS – Some good news!<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve been bemoaning our current extreme drought for so long I figured I should let readers know that last evening the seasonal monsoons finally brought some blessed relief all the way up to northern Utah. A 35 minute downpour put 1.4 inches of water in my rain gauge and when it was all over it read 1.45 inches.<\/em><\/p>\n

During the middle of the worst of the storm I caught my soaking wet next door neighbor on his front lawn doing a pretty spectacular rain dance. He had his shirt off and he was wearing what I can only describe as a shit-eating grin on his face. Watching him prance around in the rain brought a similar grin to my face. Wish I’d taken his picture.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the 30 years I’ve lived in this house I only remember one other storm that rivaled it. It’s about damned time!<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Christmas colors in July.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100579,"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":[334,4284],"tags":[2529,4287,5860,211,5861,5857,5859,5858],"class_list":["post-100578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-cassins-finch","tag-cassins-finch","tag-christmas-colors","tag-conifer-tree","tag-male","tag-monsoonal-rainstorm","tag-purple-finch","tag-roger-tory-peterson","tag-sparrow-dipped-in-raspberry-juice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/cassins-finch-6060-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-qae","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100578","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=100578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}