{"id":113397,"date":"2022-07-01T05:56:13","date_gmt":"2022-07-01T11:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=113397"},"modified":"2022-07-01T06:43:33","modified_gmt":"2022-07-01T12:43:33","slug":"some-recent-birds-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/01\/some-recent-birds-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Recent Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nine photos, seven species.<\/p>\n

Occasionally I devote an entire blog post to photos of birds that I think deserve to be seen but don’t merit standalone status in a post of their own. They’re interesting photos in one way or another but not top drawer for a variety of reasons. Collectively they give readers a feeling for the species I’ve been seeing and not seeing recently.<\/p>\n

All photos included in today’s post were taken here in northern Utah within the last 30 days. For the sake of smoother reading I’ll refer to some of these birds as males when I don’t really know their sex. Sorry, I didn’t have time to include image techs.<\/p>\n

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A Rock Wren buried in the shadows of an overhanging sagebrush and perched on a rock. He stayed in this spot for a long time and at first I couldn’t figure out what was keeping him there. But there’s a hint in the photo of what it was, if you look closely.<\/p>\n

That hint can be seen beneath the tip of his bill, on the rock – two little green legs sticking straight up.<\/p>\n

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Those legs belonged to a species of green grasshopper that was mostly hidden in a crevice on the rock. He repeatedly picked it up and dropped it into the crevice again, before eventually swallowing it after he’d mashed it up a little.<\/p>\n

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A male Black-headed Grosbeak singing on territory on a high perch. I don’t get opportunities with this species very often, especially while they’re singing, so I like the photo well enough to include here – even though it was taken at a pretty steep angle.<\/p>\n

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A very young American Robin drying out after a recent bath in the mountain pond below him and to our right. Believe it or not, those scraggly tail feathers are almost brand new – they’re just wet and disheveled from his bath. A brief grooming session will spruce them right up again.<\/p>\n

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A Double-crested Cormorant in full flight, rather than having just taken off. This was an extremely quick grab shot and I give a lot of the credit to the autofocus capabilities of the R5 for latching onto him and getting him sharp in such little time.<\/p>\n

I’d like the photo a lot more if it wasn’t for that white horizontal reflection on the water above his wingtips.<\/p>\n

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Another cormorant, this time in the wing-spreading posture the species is so well known for. It’s thought that the primary purpose of this very common behavior is to dry their wings.<\/p>\n

Typically they do it in a “loafing area” soon after getting out of the water and this particular spot at the edge of a pond fits the “loafing area” definition perfectly. Sometimes there’s as many as a dozen cormorants lounging around here, with many of them in this wing-spreading posture at the same time.<\/p>\n

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A Loggerhead Shrike hunting from the top of an unusually tall sagebrush. The shrike wasn’t close but he’s sharp with good detail, especially considering how far away he was. Once again, thanks R5.<\/p>\n

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A side-lit Short-eared Owl hunting from a fence post. This is one of the two presumed males that I photographed in aerial dogfights recently. It may or may not be the same owl I posted a photo of yesterday (I think it’s the other one because this bird’s face appears to be darker).<\/p>\n

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A female Red-tailed Hawk on her nest with one of her chicks in the shade beneath her breast. This is a deliberate behavior to keep her youngsters shaded and a little cooler in the hot sun. She stands like this for a long time to keep her chicks in the shade provided by her body. Thankfully this nest will be in the shade of the cliff for the hottest parts of the day.<\/p>\n

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So there you have it – a collection of bird photos I’ve taken in the last month. Some are more interesting than others but I hope there’s several of interest to each of my readers.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Nine photos, seven species.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113403,"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":[1734,3,338,334,1524,1905,346,450,5753,356],"tags":[1735,1525,6414,1901,6415,206,451,1572,279,311],"class_list":["post-113397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-robin","category-antelope-island","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-black-headed-grosbeaks","category-double-crested-cormorants","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","category-red-tailed-hawks","category-rock-wren","category-short-eared-owls","tag-american-robin-2","tag-black-headed-grosbeak","tag-canon-r5-autofocus-capability","tag-double-crested-cormorant","tag-grasshopper-prey","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-rock-wren","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/red-tailed-hawk-8404-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-tuZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113397","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=113397"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113463,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113397\/revisions\/113463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}