{"id":134409,"date":"2023-04-21T05:51:26","date_gmt":"2023-04-21T11:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=134409"},"modified":"2023-04-21T07:25:46","modified_gmt":"2023-04-21T13:25:46","slug":"mated-loggerhead-shrikes-courtship-feeding-and-acting-goofy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/21\/mated-loggerhead-shrikes-courtship-feeding-and-acting-goofy\/","title":{"rendered":"Mated Loggerhead Shrikes Courtship Feeding And Acting Goofy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six days ago I managed to document some interesting and fun behaviors of a mated pair of Loggerhead Shrikes in Box Elder County.<\/p>\n

That morning I was having intermittent problems with soft images so several of the photos below are noticeably soft. But they’re sharp enough to document behaviors.<\/p>\n

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Both shrikes were acting goofy but after a while it became apparent that their sometimes quirky behaviors revolved around courtship feeding. Courtship feeding occurs when the female is ready to form pair bonds, so she demands and accepts food from her chosen mate.<\/p>\n

And this female was nothing if she wasn’t demanding. From this spot on the fence wire she regularly and persistently demanded to be fed by facing in his direction and squawking loudly. I’ve seen Black-billed Magpies and a few other birds doing the same thing<\/a><\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

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Several times, while the female was on that same spot on the wire (out of frame to the left), the male would land on the other side of the fence post and hunt insects from there. He was high-strung and twitchy, moving quickly to different places on the wire or taking off after prey.<\/p>\n

But this time he fooled me.<\/p>\n

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He quickly turned to his left and took off to land on top of the fence post. I caught him in a flight posture I adore, largely because of his curled feet.<\/p>\n

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I got one more flight shot before…<\/p>\n

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he landed on the post.<\/p>\n

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He hunted from the top of the post as the female waited to be fed on the wire below him. She was squawking at him intermittently.<\/p>\n

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He took off after prey and…<\/p>\n

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returned to the wire on ‘his side’ of the post with a small insect in his bill. This photo was taken immediately after he landed so his tail is flared and raised to stop his forward momentum.<\/p>\n

I had to wonder if he preferred to have the fence post between them because she was so very demanding, even aggressive at times. If so I don’t blame him.<\/p>\n

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He reached around the post to offer her the insect, which she eagerly accepted. When I see this photo of this behavior the word “cute” comes to mind. I can’t help myself.<\/p>\n

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Immediately after accepting the insect the female jumped up to the top of the post to wait for the next food delivery. The male is already scanning the area for another edible gift.<\/p>\n

But the next food delivery didn’t happen while I was there. Wouldn’t you know it, a pickup pulling an incredibly noisy trailer came along and scared both shrikes into the next county.<\/p>\n

That’s bird photography for you.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: Image techs for these photos were in the range of 1\/4000 \u2013 1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc,.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Six days ago I managed to document some interesting and fun behaviors of a mated pair of Loggerhead Shrikes. (10 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134419,"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":[334,392,346,391],"tags":[689,1973,137,178,1557,409,206,211,1571,1539,256,311],"class_list":["post-134409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-box-elder-county","tag-courtship-feeding","tag-female","tag-hunting","tag-insect","tag-lanius-ludovicianus","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-male","tag-mate-feeding","tag-mated-pair","tag-prey","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/loggerhead-shrike-9088-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-yXT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134409","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=134409"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134463,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134409\/revisions\/134463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}