{"id":125702,"date":"2022-12-15T06:37:07","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T13:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=125702"},"modified":"2022-12-15T06:56:04","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T13:56:04","slug":"male-common-goldeneye-in-flight-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/15\/male-common-goldeneye-in-flight-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Common Goldeneye In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late yesterday afternoon I could only watch as a single male Common Goldeneye, that was much too far away for quality photos, swam from my left to my right and eventually disappeared behind the shoreline reeds between us. So I almost completely forgot about him as I concentrated on other birds.<\/p>\n

But then, maybe five minutes later, I heard the distinctive whistling sound of a goldeneye in flight coming from my right. He was the only goldeneye on the pond so I knew he’d taken off but he was still behind the vegetation so at first I didn’t know where he was or in what direction he was flying.<\/p>\n

But soon he popped out from behind the reeds, flying to my left and very low across my field of view. He wasn’t leaving the large pond, he was just flying from one side of it to the other. I had less than three seconds to attempt to acquire him in my viewfinder, lock focus on him and fire off a very short burst before he was too far past me.<\/p>\n

A tall order because by then he’d really built up a head of steam.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Considering the circumstances I got lucky with this single photo that was sharp enough. He didn’t waste any energy gaining elevation because he was only going to the far side of the pond, as suggested by how close his left wingtip is to the water’s surface long after he’d taken off, I wish he’d been a little closer to me but I was still glad to get the shot.<\/p>\n

Goldeneyes are speedy little ducks capable of flying nearly 45 mph so by the time I got my lens on him he was really moving. Such speeds so soon after takeoff require very fast wingbeats and goldeneyes attain 9 wingbeats per second which makes their wings whistle. Loudly. In this case I’d never have seen him in time if it hadn’t been for the sound of his whistling wings.<\/p>\n

Ernest Hemingway, an inveterate hunter, said goldeneyes in flight make the sound of “ripping silk”. If you’d like to hear that sound, check out this episode of Birdnote<\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0(click on “Listen Now”).<\/p>\n

That’s the sound I was hearing when this shot was taken.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Note: The large oval-shaped white spot between the bill and eyes of adult males of this species is normally solid white. This male has some color in that spot and I don’t know why.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Common Goldeneyes are called “Whistlers” for good reason.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125703,"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":[334,376],"tags":[2847,91,6662,146,3417,211,3089,6663,311,3799,6661],"class_list":["post-125702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-common-goldeneyes","tag-bucephala-clangula","tag-common-goldeneye","tag-ernest-hemmingway","tag-flight","tag-flight-speed","tag-male","tag-salt-lake-county","tag-the-sound-of-ripping-silk","tag-utah-2","tag-whistling-wings","tag-wingbeat-speed"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/common-goldeneye-4233-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-wHs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125702","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=125702"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125753,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125702\/revisions\/125753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}