![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/sage-thrasher-5408-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"sage-thrasher-5408-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nPhoto potpourri – six photos of six species.<\/p>\n
This is another one of my posts that includes photos that would never win any prizes, but they do document some of the ‘other’ birds and critters I’ve been seeing recently. I think each one is interesting in some way or another and the quality of several of them is pretty good. Two of them are of species I almost never see but wouldn’t you know, those are the two with the poorest image quality (the last two photos below).<\/p>\n
The first photo was taken in Box Elder County on August 28th and all of the rest were taken on the same trip to Bear River MBR on August 25th.<\/p>\n
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1\/5000, 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 Soon after sunrise I drove over a hill only to see the largest flock of Chukars I’d ever seen lounging on the remote road in front of me. As soon as they saw me they ran into the brush on the right side of the road so I passed them to turn around and come back in the remote possibility that I’d get a clear shot at one of them in the thick vegetation. I drove up to where they’d disappeared off the edge of the road and waited for one or more of them to make an appearance.<\/p>\n No Chukars appeared but I happened to look slightly behind me and there on a rock was a Sage Thrasher I hadn’t seen, watching me and apparently enjoying my frustration with the Chukars. Unusual for this species, the thrasher posed for me out in the open for quite a while on two different rock perches. And yes, that’s a tiny insect flying above the tip of its tail.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, 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 A Killdeer in typical, rather unattractive, habitat for them. But I think the well-lit bird stands out nicely against this background in mottled light. I photograph this species most often in the spring when their eye ring is much more vividly bright orange.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/8000, 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 An Eastern Kingbird atop a phrag plume. This is one of only a handful of Eastern Kingbirds I’ve seen this entire summer and it’s the only one I’ve photographed this year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, 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 A pair of Greater Yellowlegs foraging in the shallow water. The bird on the right is sharper than the other one but I like their similar poses and their muted reflections.<\/p>\n While I was photographing one of these Yellowlegs I noticed something red that was moving as it entered the extreme upper left-hand corner of the frame. It was far away and tiny in the frame but I was curious enough to check it out so I focused on it to see if I could tell what it was.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, 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 I turned out to be a Virginia Rail, a highly secretive species that is far more often heard than seen. By the time I got focused on it I had time for only a single sharp shot before it disappeared. I was lucky to get that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2500, 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 The first and only Long-tailed Weasel I’ve photographed this year. It was on the right side of the refuge road and even though my pickup was angled across the road as much as was practical I still had to shoot between my folded driver’s side mirror and my windshield pillar. The diameter of my lens, including lens hood, is more than 6″ but I had less space than that between my mirror and the pillar so they cut off some of my field of view.<\/p>\n And apparently that interfered with my autofocus mechanism, so every last photo of the weasel was soft. I applied a little extra sharpening to this one during processing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anyway, a gallimaufry of photos this morning. I hope my readers enjoyed at least some of them. And that I didn’t jabber on too much about them.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/killdeer-3979-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"killdeer-3979-ron-dudley\\"")
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