{"id":13484,"date":"2013-03-20T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=13484"},"modified":"2013-03-20T18:44:50","modified_gmt":"2013-03-21T00:44:50","slug":"common-nighthawk-of-on-a-different-stripe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/20\/common-nighthawk-of-on-a-different-stripe\/","title":{"rendered":"Common Nighthawk Of (on) A Different Stripe"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was one of my stranger encounters with the bird world, though I’ll preface my narrative by admitting that I don’t have a lot of experience with nightjars of any species so perhaps what this bird was doing wasn’t really so unusual.\u00a0 I just don’t know.<\/p>\n

On September 7 at 9 AM (in case that info is significant in explaining the behavior)\u00a0I was driving up to Buffalo Point on Antelope Island when I spotted this bird on the paved road.\u00a0 I thought it was road-kill because it didn’t move or fly off\u00a0as I very slowly approached so I stopped and walked back to investigate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1000, f\/9, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It was a Common Nighthawk and it was squatted down smack-dab in the middle of the paint stripe on the side (not the middle) of the road.\u00a0 At first I just wanted some photos but after I took a few from a distance I began to worry about the bird.\u00a0 I figured it must at least be injured so I approached it thinking it might be a candidate for a rehab facility\u00a0if its injury wasn’t serious.\u00a0 It didn’t budge a bristle, even when I got within about 3 feet from it.\u00a0 The only movement I noticed during the 9 minutes I spent with it was a very slight change in head position and the closing of its eye after it deemed me not to be an immediate threat.<\/p>\n

At that point I figured this bird thought I couldn’t see it and that’s why it didn’t fly away.\u00a0 I know they’re slow to flush because they instinctively rely on their cryptic coloration for camouflage.\u00a0 So I got back in my pickup and drove the very short distance\u00a0up to Buffalo Point and returned in less than 5 minutes.\u00a0 When I did, the nighthawk was gone.<\/p>\n

What I thought was particularly interesting here was not only that the bird had chosen the road-stripe to rest on but that it had oriented its body perfectly lengthwise to the stripe.\u00a0 These birds do the same thing when they roost on a tree\u00a0branch –\u00a0orient their bodies lengthwise to the branch.<\/p>\n

So, I guess I’m thinking that this\u00a0nighhawk’s instincts took over and when it\u00a0chose the\u00a0road to rest on it picked the stripe in particular because it resembled a branch and oriented its body on the stripe like it would on a branch.<\/p>\n

Amateur speculation on my part but once again I\u00a0couldn’t help myself.\u00a0 There’s just something about behaviors that intrigues me…<\/p>\n

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

This was one of my stranger encounters with the bird world, though I\u2019ll preface my narrative by admitting that I don\u2019t have a lot of experience with nightjars of any species so perhaps what this bird was doing wasn\u2019t really so unusual. I just don\u2019t know.<\/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":[4,5,334,1339,395],"tags":[31,1343,1345,1341,1340,1344,1342,311],"class_list":["post-13484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-behaviors","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-common-nighthawks","category-miscellaneous","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-buffalo-point","tag-camouflage","tag-chordeiles-minor","tag-common-nighthawk","tag-cryptic-coloration","tag-nightjar","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3vu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13484","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=13484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}