{"id":139005,"date":"2023-07-07T05:59:03","date_gmt":"2023-07-07T11:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=139005"},"modified":"2023-07-07T06:38:15","modified_gmt":"2023-07-07T12:38:15","slug":"some-recent-birds-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/07\/some-recent-birds-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Recent Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s time for another edition of Some Recent Birds.<\/p>\n

These are photos I’ve taken in the last couple of weeks that may not deserve standalone status on Feathered Photography but for one reason or another I think each one is interesting. The first four photos below were taken during my recent camping trip to Montana and Idaho and the last six were taken during a trip to Bear River MBR ten days ago.<\/p>\n

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A pair of Trumpeter Swans foraging on the flooded Red Rock River.<\/p>\n

When the numbers of these swans plummeted to 70 birds in the 1930’s, nearby Red Rock Lakes NWR played a significant role in preventing them from becoming extinct. So on my trips to this area I always try get at least some documentary-quality photos of them. Usually when I find them they’re on the refuge but these two were more than 10 miles west of the refuge.<\/p>\n

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A very cooperative Golden Eagle in terrible light.<\/p>\n

This photo is an excellent example of some of the reasons why photographing birds with the sun high in the sky is far from ideal. It was taken at 11:05 AM, during my long drive back to my camping trailer after a morning at the refuge, so much of the bird is shaded by its own body and the eagle’s heavy brow ridge made it impossible for me to get light in its eye.<\/p>\n

But I’ll photograph a Golden Eagle, no matter the time of day.<\/p>\n

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A Western Grebe behavior I’d never documented before.<\/p>\n

The female of the pair, on the left, repeatedly dipped her bill into the water and kept it there for extended periods. Western Grebes often peer into water with their eyes below the surface, presumably searching for prey or potential predators. But for three reasons I’m convinced that was not<\/em> what she was doing – 1) only her bill went into the water, not her face, head or eyes, 2) she was continually displaying her triangular crest which I presume she wouldn’t do while looking for prey or predators and 3) her mate was extremely attentive to what she was doing.<\/p>\n

I believe I was witnessing some kind of courtship behavior but when I tried to research it I came up empty.<\/p>\n

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A male Long-billed Curlew that had a very strong affinity for these old railroad tracks. I saw him there several times over several days. On one occasion he chased off another male curlew that had the audacity to fly in and land right next to ‘his’ railroad tracks.<\/p>\n

I’m thinking that photos of curlews that include railroad tracks, good or bad, are more than a little unusual.<\/p>\n

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An American Avocet in flight soon after takeoff. This bird had repeated altercations with other avocets and it almost looks like it came out of the skirmishes with a black eye.<\/p>\n

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A grab shot of a White-faced Ibis in flight.<\/p>\n

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A male Black-necked Stilt calling in flight. You know me and layered backgrounds, I love’em.<\/p>\n

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An adult Black-crowned Night Heron that unexpectedly rose up out of the reeds and began to curl around in front of me. This is the only shot I got that had light on the face of the bird.<\/p>\n

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A young American White Pelican that flew by while I was photographing fighting avocets and stilts.<\/p>\n

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A spot-lit Great Blue Heron. I think this photo had gobs of potential, but I wasn’t paying close enough attention and cut off his virtual lower legs and feet.<\/p>\n

Still making rookie mistakes after all these years.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Ten photos of ten species.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139008,"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":[334,1493,360],"tags":[27,420,716,705,153,712,208,6995,263,1588,322,715],"class_list":["post-139005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","tag-american-avocet","tag-american-white-pelican","tag-black-crowned-night-heron","tag-black-necked-stilt","tag-golden-eagle","tag-great-blue-heron","tag-long-billed-curlew","tag-railroad-tracks","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-trumpeter-swan","tag-western-grebe","tag-white-faced-ibis"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/black-crowned-night-heron-7701-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Aa1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139005","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=139005"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139057,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139005\/revisions\/139057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}