{"id":139928,"date":"2023-07-26T06:00:02","date_gmt":"2023-07-26T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=139928"},"modified":"2023-07-26T07:09:20","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T13:09:20","slug":"yellow-warbler-with-a-case-of-the-jumpies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/26\/yellow-warbler-with-a-case-of-the-jumpies\/","title":{"rendered":"Yellow Warbler With A Case Of The ‘Jumpies’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A twitchy bird in low light – a daunting challenge for both the photographer and his gear.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 3200, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Six days ago I had a mostly unproductive morning in the mountains but at least it started out with a pretty good bird, a male Yellow Warbler. I found him in deep shade, long before the sun came up over a nearby mountain, so I was really struggling for shutter speed for such an active bird.<\/p>\n

I noticed almost immediately that he was hopping or jumping everywhere he went in the willow, without using his wings. You can imagine how difficult he was to track with my lens as he hopped and zigged and zagged in three dimensions through all the twigs and leaves.<\/p>\n

As soon as I saw him look up like this I figured he was about to jump to another perch so I fired off a short burst.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 3200, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

And jump he did, all the way from his perch at lower left to the twig at upper right. I almost had enough shutter speed to get him sharp.<\/p>\n

From his new perch he hopped around a little from branch to branch before I could get my lens on him.<\/p>\n

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1\/1250, f\/6.3, ISO 3200, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

And then he performed another pretty impressive jump without using his wings but at this shutter speed he’s dreadfully soft. And besides, it looks like my focus may have been on the forked branch above his head.<\/p>\n

He looked damp to me so I wondered if he’d bathed recently in the nearby stream and wet feathers might be at least part of the reason he was reluctant to use his wings.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 3200, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Here he is on his new perch and it was at this point that I realized the likely reason he was wet. Even though it was a clear morning, it had rained the night before and the willow in the shade was still sopping wet – as evidenced by the water dripping off of the branch at lower left in this photo and the previous one.<\/p>\n

He was here for only a moment before he hopped along the branch to his right and disappeared in the foliage.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 3200, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

A few moments later I got what was probably my best shot of him.<\/p>\n

And you guessed it, when he left this perch he…<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 3200, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

jumped without using his wings.<\/p>\n

While I was with him I was concerned that he might be injured and that was why I never saw him open his wings. But soon after this shot was taken he flew right in front of my pickup to the other side of the road.<\/p>\n

So I’m pretty sure his wings were just wet, making them less efficient than usual, so he didn’t use them unless he had to. That’s my theory anyway.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Note: So, photographers may be wondering. If I was in such low light and struggling for shutter speed, why didn’t I switch over to f\/5.6 instead of f6.3, which would have increased my SS a little? An unfortunate brain fart is the answer.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

A twitchy bird in low light – a daunting challenge for both the photographer and his gear. (6 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139934,"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":[5,6,334,3486],"tags":[7028,649,7027,2589,311,318,2588],"class_list":["post-139928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-yellow-warbler","tag-jumping-instead-of-flying","tag-low-light","tag-not-using-wings","tag-setophaga-petechia","tag-utah-2","tag-wasatch-mountains","tag-yellow-warbler"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/yellow-warbler-2944-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-AoU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139928","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=139928"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139976,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139928\/revisions\/139976"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}