{"id":12804,"date":"2013-02-27T04:47:01","date_gmt":"2013-02-27T11:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=12804"},"modified":"2013-02-27T05:05:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-27T12:05:00","slug":"mucus-drinking-cowbird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/27\/mucus-drinking-cowbird\/","title":{"rendered":"Mucus-drinking Cowbird"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before Europeans came to North America and\u00a0cleared forests which modified the environment into the agricultural and suburban landscapes of today,\u00a0the range of the Brown-headed Cowbird was limited to the short-grass plains where they followed the almost\u00a0endless herds of\u00a0American Bison as they fed on the insects stirred up by\u00a0those wandering behemoths.\u00a0 Early settlers so strongly associated them with bison that they\u00a0were called “Buffalo Birds”.<\/p>\n

Today that relationship still exists wherever limited numbers of bison can still be found.\u00a0 Antelope Island is one of those places.<\/p>\n

One of the many challenges facing the cowbird was obtaining enough moisture as it followed the bison herds\u00a0over the hot, rolling plains.\u00a0 In late summer several years ago I photographed a cowbird behavior that illustrated one of the ways they solved that problem.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"bison<\/a><\/p>\n

I found this huge bull languishing in the broiling sun next to a boulder that it had been using as a scratching post.\u00a0\u00a0A group of Brown-headed Cowbirds were in the vicinity but at first I wasn’t paying much attention to them.\u00a0 \u00a0Then this female (at frame bottom)\u00a0flew in close…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"bison<\/a><\/p>\n

and began flying at the nostrils of the bull.\u00a0 Initially I was unsure about what she was doing but she did it repeatedly and eventually it became clear that she was…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"bison<\/a><\/p>\n

drinking the mucus-laden secretions from the bison’s nostrils.\u00a0 She would actually hover in place as she gobbled down the long, stringy strands of mucus.<\/p>\n

Not a pretty sight and perhaps a bit unsettling to our human sensibilities but what an incredibly adaptive behavior for survival in hot, arid conditions.<\/p>\n

I love seeing “stuff” like this!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: Apologies for the image quality here.\u00a0 It was mid-day and the light was very\u00a0harsh so I had to process these images heavily to manage the extreme contrast.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Before Europeans came to North America and\u00a0cleared forests which modified the environment into the agricultural and suburban landscapes of today,\u00a0the range of the Brown-headed Cowbird was limited to the short-grass plains where they followed the almost\u00a0endless herds of\u00a0American Bison as they fed on the insects stirred up by\u00a0those wandering behemoths.\u00a0 Early settlers so strongly associated them with bison that they\u00a0were called “Buffalo Birds”. Today that relationship still exists wherever limited numbers of bison can still be found.\u00a0 Antelope Island is one of those places. One of the many challenges facing the cowbird was obtaining enough moisture as it followed the bison herds\u00a0over the hot, rolling plains.\u00a0 In late summer several years ago I photographed a cowbird behavior that illustrated one of the ways they solved that problem.   I found this huge bull languishing in the broiling sun next to a boulder that it had been using as a scratching post.\u00a0\u00a0A group of Brown-headed Cowbirds were in the vicinity but at first I wasn’t paying much attention to them.\u00a0 \u00a0Then this female (at frame bottom)\u00a0flew in close…     and began flying at the nostrils of the bull.\u00a0 Initially I was unsure about what she was doing but she did it repeatedly and eventually it became clear that she was…     drinking the mucus-laden secretions from the bison’s nostrils.\u00a0 She would actually hover in place as she gobbled down the long, stringy strands of mucus. Not a pretty sight and perhaps a bit unsettling to our human sensibilities but what an incredibly adaptive behavior…<\/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":[5,334,347,1291,392],"tags":[31,56,780,61,1293,1295,137,1292,1296,1294],"class_list":["post-12804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-bison-mammals","category-brown-headed-cowbird-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-bison","tag-brown-headed-cowbird","tag-buffalo","tag-buffalo-bird","tag-drink","tag-female","tag-molothrus-ater","tag-mucus","tag-water"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3kw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12804","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=12804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}