{"id":110711,"date":"2022-05-06T05:24:45","date_gmt":"2022-05-06T11:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=110711"},"modified":"2022-05-06T05:24:45","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T11:24:45","slug":"loggerhead-shrike-perched-in-flight-and-then-perched-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/06\/loggerhead-shrike-perched-in-flight-and-then-perched-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Loggerhead Shrike – Perched, In Flight And Then Perched Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

And attempting to regurgitate a pellet.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/9, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday morning this Loggerhead Shrike that I had no idea was anywhere in the vicinity popped out of a sagebrush right next to me, landed on top of it and actually stayed there for a few moments with me quite close. I haven’t been this close to a shrike in a very long time. Having him on good light was a bonus.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/9, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

He didn’t stay there long but very soon after he took off I got this flight shot that I really like. At this point I thought he’d fly far away but almost immediately he…<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/9, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

put on his air brakes for a landing nearby.<\/p>\n

This shot isn’t as sharp as the others and I didn’t have enough room on the right for a horizontal composition but I decided to include it to show that he didn’t go far.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/9, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

He landed on another sagebrush just a few feet to the right of his previous perch and struck almost exactly the same alert pose he’d been in on the first sagebrush.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/9, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

While he was there he tried to hack up a pellet.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/9, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

He tried several times but without success. As birds often do when they’re trying to regurgitate a pellet he scratched his throat with the toes of one of his feet in an attempt to facilitate the movement of the pellet up his throat. But he turned away from me when he did it so I’m not including that shot.<\/p>\n

While I was processing these photos I wondered if I was seeing an insect leg stuck to the underside of his lower mandible so I cropped very tightly on his head to see if doing so allowed me to tell for sure.<\/p>\n

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It didn’t. I still can’t tell for sure if it’s an insect leg but I think it might be.\u00a0But the bonus of cropping in so tightly is one of the best looks I’ve ever had in my photos of the tomial tooth (falcon tooth) on his upper mandible.<\/p>\n

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For those who may be wondering, no I don’t think I’d have been able to get both flight shots, and get at least one of them sharp, if I hadn’t been shooting with the R5. The huge file size of the R5 combined with the full frame sensor and animal\/eye detect allowed me to keep him in frame, mostly sharp and still have more than enough pixels for good image quality.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t always work that well but it does often enough to make this bird photographer happy.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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PS – I’ve been successful in the past a number of times at photographing shrikes hacking up pellets. If you’re interested, photos can be seen here<\/a><\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

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And attempting to regurgitate a pellet. (7 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110713,"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":[3,6,334,346,395],"tags":[31,6322,6214,133,146,409,206,2738,6323,306,311],"class_list":["post-110711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","category-miscellaneous","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-attempting-to-regurgitate-a-pellet","tag-canon-r5","tag-falcon-tooth","tag-flight","tag-lanius-ludovicianus","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-takeoff","tag-throat-scratching-to-help-pellet-come-out","tag-tomial-tooth","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/loggerhead-shrike-7675-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-sNF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110711","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=110711"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110744,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110711\/revisions\/110744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}