{"id":133831,"date":"2023-04-13T06:13:42","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T12:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=133831"},"modified":"2023-04-13T08:30:59","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T14:30:59","slug":"avian-potpourri-from-my-recent-trip-to-bear-river-mbr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/13\/avian-potpourri-from-my-recent-trip-to-bear-river-mbr\/","title":{"rendered":"Avian Potpourri From My Recent Trip To Bear River MBR"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twelve photos of nine species.<\/p>\n

Three days ago I spent a wonderful early spring morning at Bear River MBR. I took a lot of photos that were interesting but might not deserve standalone status on Feathered Photography so today it’s my intention to present some of them en masse.<\/p>\n

Sorry, with this many photos I don’t have time to include image techs.<\/p>\n

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A Western Meadowlark foraging for food in the grasses at the refuge entrance. This photo was taken very soon after sunrise and the bright yellows of the bird were facing directly toward the sun so the exposure was a difficult one.<\/p>\n

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A Great Blue Heron flying over one of the ponds, with snowy mountains in the background.<\/p>\n

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A very handsome Clark’s Grebe that played cat and mouse with me for a long time. The catch light in ‘his’ eye in his reflection looks a little like a plus (+) sign, giving him a starry-eyed look.<\/p>\n

Lots of folks can’t tell the difference between Clark’s Grebes and Western Grebes so here’s a tip. The eyes of Clark’s Grebes are surrounded by white, while the eyes of Western Grebes are…<\/p>\n

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surrounded by black. There are other more subtle differences but that’s my go-to field mark.<\/p>\n

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A Yellow-headed Blackbird searching for midges and other insects in the grass alongside the road. I was absolutely delighted to see masses of midges in flight along the south side of the auto tour route. Because of our severe drought, last year midges were pretty much a no-show and many birds paid the price for their absence because so many species depend on midges for food.<\/p>\n

But on this morning, even this early in the year (and in the morning) when it hadn’t warmed up much, midges were plentiful enough in flight for me to see the beginnings of their famous midge tornadoes (midge-nados). That bodes well for birds.<\/p>\n

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This Red-winged Blackbird had been displaying when the Yellow-headed Blackbird landed on a phrag stem below and behind him. The red-wing immediately stopped displaying, apparently because he was annoyed by the presence of the yellow-headed who was also displaying and stealing his thunder.<\/p>\n

The red-wing was annoyed enough that he took off. But the yellow-headed continued to display so I wondered if I could pull my pickup forward and get some unobstructed photos of him and still have a good light angle on the bird.<\/p>\n

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To my surprise I succeeded reasonably well.<\/p>\n

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A butt shot of American White Pelicans in flight with the snow-covered Promontory mountains in the background. I kept hoping the pelicans would turn to the south (our left) so I’d have a broadside view of them but that didn’t happen. I’m including the photo in part because it should give readers a sense of place. Those mountains are a pretty spectacular backdrop at the refuge, especially this time of year.<\/p>\n

To partially compensate for the long-distance butt shot…<\/p>\n

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here’s a much closer side view of a pelican on one of the ponds.<\/p>\n

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A trio of Gadwalls zooming across one of the large ponds. At first I was a little confused by the ID of these ducks because the drake in the middle has a white ring around his neck and there’s another white ring at the base of his bill. Those rings normally wouldn’t be there so maybe they’re a result of molting? Or a little fooling around by one of his parents, resulting in hybrid characteristics? I dunno.<\/p>\n

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A mated pair of Cinnamon Teals coming in to land amongst the phrags. I was struck by the unusual landing posture of the female but there’s a good reason for it.<\/p>\n

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Ducks land at a pretty good clip and these teals are about to land right in the middle of all those vertical stems. Running into one or more of the phrag stems at speed would be a potential disaster so this posture is the result of her applying her air brakes so she can drop down at a steep angle into a relatively open area without hitting anything. And that’s exactly what they both did. Plop!<\/p>\n

OK, that’s enough. I could include more photos from that morning but I don’t want to overdo it. Maybe I already have.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Twelve photos of nine species.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133834,"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":[338,334],"tags":[420,6853,49,84,88,6852,1754,712,1980,2524,264,311,322,323,898],"class_list":["post-133831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","tag-american-white-pelican","tag-avian-potpourri","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-cinnamon-teal","tag-clarks-grebe","tag-difference-between-clarks-grebe-and-western-grebe","tag-gadwall-2","tag-great-blue-heron","tag-midges","tag-promontory-mountains","tag-red-winged-blackbird","tag-utah-2","tag-western-grebe","tag-western-meadowlark","tag-yellow-headed-blackbird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/cinnamon-teal-7175-horizontal-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-yOz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133831","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=133831"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133880,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133831\/revisions\/133880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}