{"id":107573,"date":"2022-02-14T05:19:33","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T12:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=107573"},"modified":"2022-02-14T08:05:44","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T15:05:44","slug":"drake-northern-pintail-flying-through-some-nasty-flak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/14\/drake-northern-pintail-flying-through-some-nasty-flak\/","title":{"rendered":"Drake Northern Pintail Flying Through Some Nasty Flak"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe he forgot her birthday. Whatever he did, or didn’t do, it must have been a doozy.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/8000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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

A week ago today I spent some time trying to photograph ducks in flight while waiting for the occasional appearance of coyotes as they hunted ducks along the Antelope Island causeway. At the time the coyotes were my primary goal and they were always in the deep early morning shade of the elevated causeway road. So when I’d raise my lens for the sudden appearance of ducks in flight my shutter speed would skyrocket in the very bright light – thus the crazy-high SS for these photos.<\/p>\n

In this shot I captured a male and female Northern Pintail flying to the west (I’ve removed the rear ends of two other ducks that were at the edge of the frame). Pintails are monogamous, pairing up in early winter, so it’s likely that these two are a mated pair. While processing the image I noticed a stream water drops coming off of the female that the male was about to fly through.<\/p>\n

But guess what. It didn’t turn out to be water. Or at least it was more than just<\/em> water.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Two photos in the burst prior to the previous shot his presumed mate dumped a load on him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the next photo he was headed straight for it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A tight crop of the first photo shows that her timing was good and her aim was true.<\/p>\n

If he forgets that today is Valentine’s Day the poor guy is toast.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of my readers.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Maybe he forgot her birthday. Whatever he did, or didn’t do, it must have been a doozy.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107576,"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":[3,334,395,2391],"tags":[2392,31,6181,146,988,2393,4771,311,6182],"class_list":["post-107573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-northern-pintail","tag-anas-acuta","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-flak","tag-flight","tag-male-and-female","tag-northern-pintail","tag-pooping","tag-utah-2","tag-valentines-day"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/northern-pintail-2715-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-rZ3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107573","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=107573"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107609,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107573\/revisions\/107609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}