{"id":136573,"date":"2023-05-27T06:11:47","date_gmt":"2023-05-27T12:11:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=136573"},"modified":"2023-05-27T06:40:05","modified_gmt":"2023-05-27T12:40:05","slug":"nesting-black-necked-stilts-the-changing-of-the-guard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/27\/nesting-black-necked-stilts-the-changing-of-the-guard\/","title":{"rendered":"Nesting Black-necked Stilts – The Changing Of The Guard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days ago, while I was photographing Forster’s Terns in flight at Bear River MBR, I noticed what I thought might be a Black-necked Stilt nesting nearby. But it was so obstructed by emergent vegetation in front of it I decided to ignore it, at least for the moment, and concentrate on photographing terns.<\/p>\n

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But a few minutes later this stilt (it turned out that this was the male of the mated pair) came flying in over my left shoulder and landed fairly close to the presumed nest and its occupant. So I moved my pickup a few feet so I could see the nest a little better and watched both stilts to see what might happen.<\/p>\n

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The male, on the right, had landed near the female on the nest but he seemed to be ignoring her so at first I wasn’t sure if they were a mated pair or not. When I spotted a couple of fishing terns approaching…<\/p>\n

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I turned my attention to them. Because I’d been watching the stilts, these two photos of a diving tern are grab shots, which I believe is what caused me to clip a wingtip.<\/p>\n

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In the next shot in the burst I lost the photobombing tern in the background and I didn’t clip any body parts but I didn’t get a catch light in the eye in either shot.<\/p>\n

When I glanced back at the stilts, “stuff” was happening.<\/p>\n

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The male was slowly and very carefully approaching the female on the nest. He walked behind and around her…<\/p>\n

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and approached her very closely.<\/p>\n

At this point I documented a snippet of endearing stilt behavior that I’d never seen before. Or even heard of.<\/p>\n

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The male placed the tip of his bill beneath the base of her bill and appeared to lift up, which I interpret as his attempt to encourage her to leave the nest and allow him to replace her.<\/p>\n

I tried to research this charming behavior with Cornell’s Birds of the World but they don’t mention it.<\/em><\/p>\n

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That was all the encouragement she needed to at least stand up.<\/p>\n

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But she was reluctant to actually leave the nest, so he had to place his bill and head between her legs (in a later shot his bill is actually between them) before she stood up completely and…<\/p>\n

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flew off.<\/p>\n

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Then the male climbed up on the nest and…<\/p>\n

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settled in for his turn at incubating their eggs.<\/p>\n

At this point, because he was obstructed by vegetation and he had his back to me, I went back to photographing terns. As I said in yesterday’s post, I don’t need any more butt shots. Even of nesting stilts.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note:<\/em><\/p>\n

In the “Excerpt” that went out to blog subscribers via email I referred to an “endearing tern behavior” rather than an “endearing stilt behavior”. Once again, coffee deprivation was my undoing. I’m working on it…<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Including a snippet of endearing tern behavior that I’d never seen before. Or even heard of. (12 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136608,"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":[338,5,334,708,1235,391],"tags":[49,705,6918,6916,707,228,6917,311],"class_list":["post-136573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-black-necked-stilts","category-forsters-terns","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-black-necked-stilt","tag-black-necked-stilts-alternating-incubation-duties","tag-diving-forsters-tern","tag-himantopus-mexicanus","tag-nest","tag-stilt-nesting-behavior","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/black-necked-stilt-8614-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-zwN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136573","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=136573"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136667,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136573\/revisions\/136667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}