{"id":124505,"date":"2022-11-30T03:55:55","date_gmt":"2022-11-30T10:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=124505"},"modified":"2022-11-30T04:43:25","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T11:43:25","slug":"belted-kingfisher-in-flight-yesterday-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/30\/belted-kingfisher-in-flight-yesterday-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"Belted Kingfisher In Flight Yesterday Morning"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first bird I’ve photographed in ten days.<\/p>\n

Late yesterday morning, at least partly in celebration of the recent bullet I dodged<\/a><\/span><\/span>, I decided to go looking for birds fairly close to home. It had snowed about 2 1\/2″ the night before and as the storm began to clear out it was still mostly cloudy but snow on the ground reflects light and I had a chance for a “sucker hole” of sunlight peeking through the clouds so I went for the gusto.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 320, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This male Belted Kingfisher was the only reasonably cooperative bird I found. The bare spot on the branch directly behind his tail was his favorite fishing perch. On three separate occasions I saw him dive after a small fish from that branch and he was successful all three times so he was batting 100% while I was there.<\/p>\n

But in this photo he wasn’t diving after a fish. Another vehicle had approached me from behind and its driver had slowed to a near stop in an effort to see what I was aiming my big lens at. The kingfisher wasn’t happy about the intrusion so he flew off, chattering and scolding his displeasure as he vamoosed.<\/p>\n

When this shot was taken I had that sucker hole in the clouds I’d hoped for. Yes, the background is busy but it’s typical habitat for a fishing kingfisher and besides, in this case I prefer it over plain, pale blue (or white) winter sky. The bird is nearly centered in the frame because I didn’t have any more room on the right.<\/p>\n

I like the good look at the flared alula<\/a><\/span><\/span> on the leading edge of his right wing. Depending on the species, alulae have 2-6 feathers. Here I believe the angled lighting allows us to see four of them, which might be all kingfishers have.<\/p>\n

It’s been over four months since I’ve posted any kingfisher photos so finding this guy felt pretty darn good. Hopefully, next time I’ll be just a wee bit closer to the bird.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

The first bird I’ve photographed in ten days.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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":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":[2853,334],"tags":[953,6634,146,2330,3089,2738,311],"class_list":["post-124505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-belted-kingfishers","category-birds","tag-alula","tag-belted-kingfishar","tag-flight","tag-megaceryle-alcyon","tag-salt-lake-county","tag-takeoff","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-wo9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124505","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=124505"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124550,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124505\/revisions\/124550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}