{"id":126312,"date":"2022-12-25T03:29:03","date_gmt":"2022-12-25T10:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=126312"},"modified":"2022-12-25T03:47:02","modified_gmt":"2022-12-25T10:47:02","slug":"hooded-merganser-with-a-christmas-eve-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/25\/hooded-merganser-with-a-christmas-eve-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"Hooded Merganser With A Christmas Eve Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late yesterday afternoon we finally had another break in our aggravating and incredibly persistent cloud cover so I made a spontaneous and quick Christmas Eve trip to a pond in an old oxbow wetland in search of an interesting bird or two.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, 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’ve occasionally been seeing this Hooded Merganser at the pond for several weeks now, so it was good to find ‘her’ again because she’s been far from reliable. I’ll refer to her as a female but it’s possible that she’s an immature bird of either sex.<\/p>\n

She’s very shy so as soon as I pull up in my pickup her modus operandi is to skedaddle to the far side of the pond, which is what she was doing when I took this shot. This is as close to a broadside view as she gave me while she was making her escape. In this area of the pond she’s always in mediocre filtered light in the late afternoon but I still like the photo, in part because of the interesting patterns and colors reflected on the water.<\/p>\n

After I took this photo she turned her back to me again as she fled, so at this point I was resigned to her being too far away for quality photos when she eventually allowed me anything other than butt shots.<\/p>\n

But this time something unexpected happened while she was making her getaway.<\/p>\n

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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

Before she was too far away she dove and caught a good-sized fish, a weather loach<\/a><\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

Most of the time while she had the fish in her bill she was turned partially away from me, but she was in better light than she’d been earlier. And for a brief moment while she was beating the snot out of the fish she turned broadside to me, which allowed me to get this photo that turned out to be my favorite of the series. I think it’s a pretty good action shot.<\/p>\n

Most of the times I’ve seen her on the pond she was actively diving for prey but this was the first time I’d seen her catch anything, fish or otherwise. I was relieved for her because it was getting fairly close to sundown and I’d have hated to think that she’d have to spend the long, cold winter night without a full belly. Especially on Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you had a full belly last night and have another one today. And that your Christmas is a memorable one spent with family and friends.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

“Tenderizing’ a weather loach. (2 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126314,"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":[334,392,4407],"tags":[6674,137,6673,141,3206,768,3207,6675,256,3089,311,320],"class_list":["post-126312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-hooded-mergansers-waterfowl","tag-christmas-eve","tag-female","tag-first-winter","tag-fish","tag-hooded-merganser","tag-immature","tag-lophodytes-cucullatus","tag-modus-operandi","tag-prey","tag-salt-lake-county","tag-utah-2","tag-weather-loach"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/hooded-merganser-4744-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-wRi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126312","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=126312"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126357,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126312\/revisions\/126357"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}