1\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 3200, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nI’ve known almost exactly where this nest is for some time because I repeatedly see the female going to the same spot in the willow but until recently I’d never seen it, despite spending quite a bit of time looking for it with my naked eye and through my lens. It’s in the middle of the very large willow so masses of branches, twigs and leaves have very effectively blocked my view of it.<\/p>\n
Three days ago, after I saw the female leave the area where the nest is to be fed by her mate, I looked for it again with my naked eye – without success. Out of frustration I decided to look for it through my lens, which I knew would be a very long shot because it’s field of view is so narrow and its depth of field is so shallow. But I tried anyway.<\/p>\n
I aimed my lens in the general direction of the nest, looked through my viewfinder, and to my huge surprise there it was – already in focus and in the center of my viewfinder! Maybe you have to be familiar with the limitations of super telephoto lenses to realize what a near-miracle that was.<\/p>\n
I took two quick documentary shots (there’s visible noise in the photo because it was taken at ISO 3200 and it’s been cropped to only 11% of the original photo) and then looked for the nest once again with my naked eye, without success. So I went back to using my lens but I’ll be damned, no matter how long I looked I just couldn’t find it again. I still haven’t seen that nest, except for the approximately five seconds I had it sharp and centered in my viewfinder three days ago.<\/p>\n
I’m so very glad I fired off those two documentary photos.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Notes on the nest itself:<\/em><\/p>\n\n- Cornell’s Birds of the World has this to say about Yellow Warbler nests: “Nest built in upright fork of bush, sapling, or tree. Nests in forks of willow generally deep, V-shaped and usually 3-layered.” It looks to me like this female warbler studied the nest-building manual carefully before constructing this one.<\/em><\/li>\n
- Cornell also says this: “In response to cowbird parasitism, Yellow Warblers frequently add to nest, covering cowbird egg(s)\u2014and any of its own\u2014producing nest of \u22652 tiers and of greater height.” Cowbirds are common in this area and this nest looks like it has multiple layers (3?) so I have to wonder if there aren’t non-viable cowbird eggs buried in its deeper layers.\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In all the years I’ve been photographing birds I’d never seen a Yellow Warbler nest, until this spring when I’ve actually seen and photographed two of them.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112112,"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":[6,334,8,391,3486],"tags":[6369,6366,2589,6367,311,2588,6368],"class_list":["post-112111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-nesting-and-mating","category-yellow-warbler","tag-limitations-of-super-telephoto-lenses","tag-photo-of-yellow-warbler-nest","tag-setophaga-petechia","tag-structure-of-yellow-warbler-nests","tag-utah-2","tag-yellow-warbler","tag-yellow-warbler-strategy-for-dealing-with-parasitic-cowbirds"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/yellow-warbler-nest-5175-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-taf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112111","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=112111"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112143,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112111\/revisions\/112143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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