{"id":101664,"date":"2021-08-25T05:57:01","date_gmt":"2021-08-25T11:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=101664"},"modified":"2021-08-25T06:41:35","modified_gmt":"2021-08-25T12:41:35","slug":"chip-and-dale-the-antics-of-two-least-chipmunks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/25\/chip-and-dale-the-antics-of-two-least-chipmunks\/","title":{"rendered":"Chip and Dale – The Antics Of Two Least Chipmunks"},"content":{"rendered":"

You remember Chip and Dale<\/a><\/span><\/span> don’t you?<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning I was essentially bird-skunked so these very cooperative Least Chipmunks saved my day. I had the strong impression they were young siblings but I don’t know that for sure.<\/p>\n

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While I was photographing these two Chipmunks in the mountains yesterday Chip and Dale of cartoon fame came strongly to mind. At one point there were actually three chipmunks on top of this old fence post but I was too close to fit them all in the frame so I’m not including any of those shots.<\/p>\n

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In the warming morning sun they did a lot of grooming and…<\/p>\n

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scratching and…<\/p>\n

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looking for new places to scratch. Just before this shot was taken this one had ‘his’ nose stuck way back there between his legs.<\/p>\n

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They were contortionists when they needed to be.<\/p>\n

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Like most youngsters (in this case, presumed) they were full of the devil. This one reached over and pushed his little pal…<\/p>\n

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over the edge of the post.<\/p>\n

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But they were obviously bonded to each other. I had to wonder if the little fella on the right wasn’t keeping tactile track of his buddy using the tip of his very long tail.<\/p>\n

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I was so close to these guys they were often too tight in the frame but when I saw this photo I had to rescue it compositionally by adding a strip of canvas at the top frame edge. This photo strongly reminds me of of the photo I posted two days ago of “Frick and Frack”, a pair of very chummy Cedar Waxwings<\/a><\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

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I took about 500 shots of these guys and probably clipped or cut off at least one tail in about half of them, even though I tried very hard to avoid doing so. Their tail is so long and ‘unpredictable’ and chipmunks are so incredibly fast that I use the guillotine on their tails way too often, especially when I have multiple chipmunks in the frame.<\/p>\n

The only bird I can think of (that I regularly photograph) whose very long tail makes it nearly as easy to clip as Chipmunk tails is the Black-billed Magpie.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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PS – At the last minute I decided to include the single photo from yesterday that frustrated me most.<\/p>\n

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Don’t ask me what’s going on here, only the chipmunk knows.<\/p>\n

He was running down the post when he suddenly reached out and grabbed a twig to support his body and then reached out toward something?, as if in desperation. It was so sudden and unexpected I not only clipped his tail, I lost sharp focus on him.<\/p>\n

Of all the photos I took yesterday this is the one I wanted most to turn out well. I probably won’t delete it but in all likelihood it’ll never be seen again. I can live with the clipped tail but it’s just a little too soft, even with extra sharpening applied during processing.<\/p>\n

But I love seeing it anyway.<\/p>\n

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You remember Chip and Dale don’t you?<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101666,"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":[4109],"tags":[168,4110,1840,5921,311,318],"class_list":["post-101664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-least-chipmunk","tag-grooming","tag-least-chipmunk","tag-scratching","tag-tamias-minimus","tag-utah-2","tag-wasatch-mountains"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/least-chipmunk-6453-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-qrK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101664","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=101664"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101704,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101664\/revisions\/101704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}