{"id":118613,"date":"2022-09-10T05:50:38","date_gmt":"2022-09-10T11:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=118613"},"modified":"2022-09-10T07:38:23","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T13:38:23","slug":"snowy-egrets-squabbling-and-fighting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/10\/snowy-egrets-squabbling-and-fighting\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowy Egrets Squabbling And Fighting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our heat dome is finally gone!<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning as I was approaching Bear River MBR just before sunrise it was only 51\u00b0 F., so for the first time in months I actually turned my pickup’s heater on. As I type this at 4 AM the next day it’s 54\u00b0 at my home here in Murray and the projected high for today is 85\u00b0, as opposed to the 100 – 107\u00b0 temps we’ve been having for the last several weeks.<\/p>\n

But there’s a downside. Without the heat dome to protect us…<\/p>\n

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the smoke from Idaho’s wildfires has moved in. With a vengeance.<\/p>\n

This is what sunrise looked like at 7:22 AM yesterday morning as the sun rose over the Wasatch Mountains just north of Brigham City. The smoke turned the eastern sky a fiery red and I was dealing with the effects of the smoke all morning. It interfered with my camera’s focusing, so I got a lot of soft shots. It caused a color shift in some of my photos, especially in the earliest part of the morning, and it also made getting proper exposure very difficult.<\/p>\n

But I still got some documentary shots of interesting Snowy Egret behavior that were ‘sharp enough’.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

When Snowy Egrets are feeding in small groups, and one gets a little too close to another, you can almost count on them having disagreements. Here the egret on the right was trying to look as large and threatening as possible by raising its wings and stretching its body vertically as high as it could.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

But when its opponent demonstrated that it might be the larger of the two birds by stretching its body even taller, the bird on the right backed down and vamoosed. In this instance no actual fight broke out.<\/p>\n

But sometimes these altercations get serious.<\/p>\n

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1\/8000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

When this fight broke out, by the time I could get focus locked on them one egret had already knocked its opponent off its feet and pinned that bird down in the water.<\/p>\n

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1\/8000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I expected the ‘losing’ bird to vigorously defend itself and at first I thought it was, by poking and biting the aggressor with its sharp beak. But when I looked at my many photos of them more carefully it became apparent that the defeated egret was only…<\/p>\n

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1\/8000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

looking up at its tormentor, as if it was begging for mercy.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Like gladiators in the ancient Roman Coliseum, I almost expected the victorious bird to look at me for a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to determine the fate of the loser. But of course that never happened. Eventually the dominant egret released its victim and they both flew off together as if they’d been friends for life.<\/p>\n

But the winner didn’t have mercy quickly. That bird held the other one down with its foot for so long I was able to get 63 photos of the behavior. And I wasn’t shooting continuously.<\/p>\n

Arthur C. Clarke once said “Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.” This egret was lucky.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Our heat dome is finally gone so yesterday morning I got to play with fighting Snowy Egrets in deliciously cool weather. (7 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118617,"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":[338,6,334,394,375],"tags":[6529,49,1444,140,5338,287,311],"class_list":["post-118613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-snowy-egrets","tag-arthur-c-clarke-quote","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-egretta-thula","tag-fighting","tag-photographing-birds-in-smoke","tag-snowy-egret","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/snowy-egret-7845-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-uR7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118613","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=118613"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118679,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118613\/revisions\/118679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}