{"id":13244,"date":"2013-03-12T08:44:15","date_gmt":"2013-03-12T14:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=13244"},"modified":"2013-03-12T08:44:15","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T14:44:15","slug":"ravenous-yellow-headed-blackbird-fledgling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/12\/ravenous-yellow-headed-blackbird-fledgling\/","title":{"rendered":"Ravenous Yellow-headed Blackbird Fledgling"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my bad habits in the field is forgetting to remove the teleconverter (tc) from my lens when the subject is a little too close (or forgetting to switch to my other camera with a shorter focal length lens).\u00a0 In the excitement of a sudden and unexpected opportunity I guess I go into “automatic mode” and it just slips my mind sometimes.\u00a0 That’s exactly what happened with this fledgling Yellow-headed Blackbird, so many of these shots are too tight or have cut off\u00a0 body parts.\u00a0 But I thought the behavior was interesting anyway.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

I was photographing adult male blackbirds when suddenly this very recently fledged youngster popped up in the cattails\u00a0right in front of me.\u00a0\u00a0 At first I thought it was just curious about me and my big truck but that turned out\u00a0not to be the case.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

It apparently wanted a better vantage point to watch out for its mom bringing in\u00a0breakfast.\u00a0\u00a0 It perched calmly\u00a0on the cattail until its sharp eyes picked up the parent coming in with food and then it immediately began to react.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Believe me, this young bird put up quite the fuss when the parent approached.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

On this trip the female brought in a beak-full of insect larvae.\u00a0 I find it interesting that for most of the year this species consumes grain and weed seeds almost exclusively but during the nesting season they switch to aquatic insects.\u00a0\u00a0 I presume that the reason for this is the high demand such fast growing chicks\u00a0must have for protein.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

The female would\u00a0feed the youngster and\u00a0then quickly leave (I don’t blame her – the begging commotion of this chick was irritating…).\u00a0 Here the young bird is watching for her to come in again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

And from the reaction of the chick it wasn’t difficult for me to tell when she was approaching.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

The young bird was so enthusiastic about getting its meal that I was amazed it didn’t fall off its perch as it reached out to its mother for food.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

At times the female had a hard time reaching the chick from any available perch so she would occasionally…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

deliver the meal while hovering in front of the fledgling.<\/p>\n

Average clutch size for this species is 3-4 but this is the only young bird I saw.\u00a0 Perhaps it was the only\u00a0survivor.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

I was photographing adult male blackbirds when suddenly this very recently fledged youngster popped up in the cattails right in front of me. At first I thought it was just curious about me and my big truck but that turned out not to be the case.<\/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":[334,392,897],"tags":[481,1318,107,137,145,709,837,256,453,899],"class_list":["post-13244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-yellow-headed-blackbirds","tag-chick","tag-clutch-size","tag-diet","tag-female","tag-fledgling","tag-food","tag-insects","tag-prey","tag-teleconverter","tag-xanthocephalus-xanthocephalus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3rC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13244","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=13244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}