{"id":111695,"date":"2022-05-27T05:40:20","date_gmt":"2022-05-27T11:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=111695"},"modified":"2022-05-27T08:27:36","modified_gmt":"2022-05-27T14:27:36","slug":"male-western-kingbird-tossing-his-potentially-dangerous-breakfast-into-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/27\/male-western-kingbird-tossing-his-potentially-dangerous-breakfast-into-the-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Western Kingbird Tossing His Potentially Dangerous Breakfast Into The Air"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently I’ve been having better luck photographing this behavior.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Three days ago I spent a couple of morning sessions with a pair of nesting Western Kingbirds. For behavioral reasons I’m confident that this is the male. He spent most of his time hunting insects and after catching one he’d usually take it to this metal pipe before killing and swallowing it. He was always strongly side lit so my goal was to photograph some interesting behavior, if it occurred.<\/p>\n

Kingbirds occasionally toss their insect prey into the air before gulping it down but it’s a difficult behavior to capture because its timing is unpredictable and it happens so very fast. When I’m lucky enough to capture the insect in the air I rarely know of my success until I look at my photos at home and that was the case here.<\/p>\n

As usual I was curious about what kind of insect it was so I…<\/p>\n

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cropped tightly on the same photo to see if doing so would allow me to tell. By this time the insect was pretty mashed up and difficult to ID but its size and reddish color gave me a clue.<\/p>\n

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A few minutes earlier one of the two kingbirds (I’m not sure which one) captured a different insect in the same area that turned out to be a wasp (I think). This prey item was the same size and color as the insect in the previous photo so I strongly suspect they’re the same species. Unfortunately, this photo is soft but it’s sharp enough to provide some clues.<\/p>\n

In an apparent effort to avoid being stung the kingbird was handling his prey very carefully, which also suggests that it was some kind of wasp. But this non-entomologist doesn’t know its species..<\/p>\n

I know, eleven days ago I posted two other photos of a kingbird tossing insects into the air<\/a><\/span><\/span> so the first photo above documents the same behavior. But it’s a behavior I seldom capture and I’m a bird behavior kinda guy so this morning I decided to post another one.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Recently I’ve been having better luck photographing this behavior. (3 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111698,"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":[334,392,675],"tags":[1557,256,6360,677,311,410,676],"class_list":["post-111695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-western-kingbirds","tag-insect","tag-prey","tag-tossing-prey-into-the-air","tag-tyrannus-verticalus","tag-utah-2","tag-wasp","tag-western-kingbird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/western-kingbird-4725-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-t3x","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111695","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=111695"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111752,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111695\/revisions\/111752"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}