{"id":106546,"date":"2022-01-24T06:15:21","date_gmt":"2022-01-24T13:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=106546"},"modified":"2022-01-24T06:15:21","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T13:15:21","slug":"some-recent-birds-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/24\/some-recent-birds-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Recent Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Avian potpourri and a feel good story.<\/p>\n

Occasionally I post a group of photos that were taken recently but didn’t quite make the cut for a post of their own, usually because of some shortcoming or flaw or because at first glance they didn’t stand out for any positive reason. I do this because I think it gives readers a sense of some of the birds I’ve been seeing here in northern Utah and a feeling for some of the experiences I’ve had in the field.<\/p>\n

Today’s post is such a grouping. Each photo below was taken in the last nine days.<\/p>\n

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A male Ruddy Duck that simply refused to come in close, despite me giving him plenty of opportunity. There was another male Ruddy further away who appeared to be in his full breeding colors but this guy seemed to be running a little short on hormones.<\/p>\n

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An American Coot performing a wing flap. I just liked the shape and position of the coot’s wings and the reflections in the water.<\/p>\n

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A Pied-billed Grebe scurrying off with crayfish prey. I like the reflection and the spiky look of the crayfish with all of those walking legs sticking out in disarray.<\/p>\n

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An Eared Grebe. This time of year I rarely get a chance to photograph this species but recently I’ve found and been able to get close to two of them – one at Bear River MBR and this one.<\/p>\n

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An immature male Common Goldeneye, just because I like the crazy reflections in the water.<\/p>\n

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This was a fun one, despite the softness of the photos. These two Pied-billed Grebes were about to have one of the most furious fights I’ve experienced with the species. The bird in the center knows what’s coming so ‘he’ performed a power dive….<\/p>\n

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straight down rather than forward. Immediately after I took this shot the second grebe followed him down and then all hell broke loose. But the entire fight, quite a long one, occurred just beneath the water’s surface so all I saw was an incredible amount of flying water.<\/p>\n

I’d love to have had an underwater camera aimed their way.<\/p>\n

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My experience with this immature Rough-legged Hawk might have been my most disappointing in the last nine days.<\/p>\n

It may look like the hawk was taking off but it was just wing-posing for me. I got lots of shots similar to this one and this pose was my favorite of the bunch. But all of my photos of this bird were quite soft, due to cold temperatures and variable expansion and contraction of my camera gear while I had my warm lens poked out my pickup window into the very cold air. During processing I even applied twice my normal amount of sharpening to the photo but it’s still embarrassingly soft.<\/p>\n

I guess I’m posting the photo out of spite.<\/p>\n

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I’ll end on a high note.<\/p>\n

This female Canvasback has had a rough go of it lately. She was injured and rehabbed by the folks at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah (WRCNU). They believe she was injured in a storm that caused her to have head trauma and a split bill. When her injuries healed our own April Olson released her at this location about a week ago and as of yesterday she’s still there.<\/p>\n

In this photo her pose is a little different because she’s settling down back into the water after a wing flap that I didn’t notice until it was just a little to late to capture her wings out.<\/p>\n

Thanks to DaLyn, Buz<\/a><\/span><\/span>, April and the rest of the staff and volunteers at WRCNU she appears to be doing just fine. In my book, heroes all.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Avian potpourri and a feel good story.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106554,"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":[1051,334,364,376,372,359,358,6072],"tags":[1052,4633,70,91,117,251,269,2404,311,2209,3056],"class_list":["post-106546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-coots","category-birds","category-canvasbacks","category-common-goldeneyes","category-eared-grebes","category-pied-billed-grebes","category-rough-legged-hawks","category-ruddy-ducks","tag-american-coot","tag-april-olson","tag-canvasback","tag-common-goldeneye","tag-eared-grebe","tag-pied-billed-grebe","tag-rough-legged-hawk","tag-ruddy-duck","tag-utah-2","tag-wildlife-rehabilitation-center-of-northern-utah","tag-wrcnu"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/rough-legged-hawk-8228-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-rIu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106546","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=106546"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106587,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106546\/revisions\/106587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}