{"id":1147,"date":"2011-01-04T08:44:09","date_gmt":"2011-01-04T14:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.wordpress.com\/?p=1147"},"modified":"2011-05-29T15:04:18","modified_gmt":"2011-05-29T21:04:18","slug":"the-northern-shrike-and-the-good-samaritan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/04\/the-northern-shrike-and-the-good-samaritan\/","title":{"rendered":"The Northern Shrike and the Good Samaritan"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog post will be more about the experience I describe than about the shrike images.<\/p>\n

The Northern Shrike has been a nemesis bird for me for a long time.\u00a0 I have\u00a0many good images of its\u00a0southern cousin the Loggerhead Shrike but the northern is an uncommon winter visitor to the northern US\u00a0 and I’ve seldom seen one and never been close enough to the species for good, detailed images – until this week.\u00a0 And\u00a0I very nearly didn’t get the shots.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Northern Shrike<\/em><\/p>\n

This winter there has been a single (as far as I can tell) Northern Shrike wintering at the Great Salt Lake wetlands where I often shoot but I’ve never been able to get close enough to it for a quality shot.\u00a0\u00a0 Two days ago I\u00a0was finally able to approach\u00a0the bird but it wouldn’t have happened without the\u00a0kind actions\u00a0of a good Samaritan.<\/p>\n

As I was driving down the dirt road I could see the shrike flitting from perch to perch in front of me.\u00a0 Several times I almost got close enough but then it would spook again.\u00a0 Finally, just as I got close and trained my big lens on the shrike, wouldn’t you know it\u00a0– a car came up behind me on the narrow road.\u00a0 If it had passed it surely would have spooked the bird.\u00a0 But it didn’t.\u00a0 The driver could\u00a0see my lens pointed out the window at the bird and\u00a0simply stopped on the road, turned his engine off and waited respectfully for over 5 minutes\u00a0as I photographed the shrike before it flew off.\u00a0\u00a0 As he then went around me I flagged him down and thanked him for his kindness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In my experience out there, such consideration is almost unheard of.\u00a0 Typically the drivers will either speed by which often flushes\u00a0the bird or if they’re photographers they will drive up to where you are in an attempt to get the same shots – which also usually scares the subject off.\u00a0 I’ve even had them honk their horns as they pass in a deliberate,\u00a0 juvenile\u00a0and\u00a0extremely rude\u00a0attempt to scare off\u00a0 the\u00a0bird.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I didn’t get this\u00a0man’s name but I wish I had.\u00a0\u00a0He was in a silver Toyota Matrix (possibly a\u00a0Rav4 ).\u00a0 I owe my\u00a0first decent photographs of a Northern Shrike to a considerate stranger and I’m grateful.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"Northern<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0Northern Shrike on cattail<\/em><\/p>\n

As luck would have it after so many years of never getting close enough to this species, the very next day I got\u00a0fairly close to the same bird again.\u00a0 This time it was on some cattails with the bluish tinged ice of a large frozen \u00a0pond as background.\u00a0\u00a0 Just goes to show\u00a0that you\u00a0never really\u00a0know what will\u00a0happen “out there” if you are tenacious about spending enough time at it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u00a0finally got my Northern Shrike!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ron\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blog post will be more about the experience I describe than about the shrike images. The Northern Shrike has been a nemesis bird for me for a long time.\u00a0 I have\u00a0many good images of its\u00a0southern cousin the Loggerhead Shrike but the northern is an uncommon winter visitor to the northern US\u00a0 and I’ve seldom seen one and never been close enough to the species for good, detailed images – until this week.\u00a0 And\u00a0I very nearly didn’t get the shots.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Northern Shrike This winter there has been a single (as far as I can tell) Northern Shrike wintering at the Great Salt Lake wetlands where I often shoot but I’ve never been able to get close enough to it for a quality shot.\u00a0\u00a0 Two days ago I\u00a0was finally able to approach\u00a0the bird but it wouldn’t have happened without the\u00a0kind actions\u00a0of a good Samaritan. As I was driving down the dirt road I could see the shrike flitting from perch to perch in front of me.\u00a0 Several times I almost got close enough but then it would spook again.\u00a0 Finally, just as I got close and trained my big lens on the shrike, wouldn’t you know it\u00a0– a car came up behind me on the narrow road.\u00a0 If it had passed it surely would have spooked the bird.\u00a0 But it didn’t.\u00a0 The driver could\u00a0see my lens pointed out the window at the bird and\u00a0simply stopped on the road, turned his engine off and waited respectfully for over 5 minutes\u00a0as I photographed the shrike before it…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16,346],"tags":[52,63,77,155,162,206,227,235,281],"class_list":["post-1147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography-ethics","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","tag-bird-photography","tag-butcher-bird","tag-cattail","tag-good-samaritan","tag-great-salt-lake-wetlands","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-nemesis-bird","tag-northern-shrike","tag-shrike"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-iv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}