{"id":140109,"date":"2023-07-29T06:10:50","date_gmt":"2023-07-29T12:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=140109"},"modified":"2023-07-29T06:57:45","modified_gmt":"2023-07-29T12:57:45","slug":"black-necked-stilt-attacking-a-great-blue-heron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/29\/black-necked-stilt-attacking-a-great-blue-heron\/","title":{"rendered":"Black-necked Stilt Attacking A Great Blue Heron"},"content":{"rendered":"

An avian version of David and Goliath. With a similar result because the little guy came out on top.<\/p>\n

Many folks think Great Blue Herons are exclusively fish eaters but they’ll eat just about anything they can kill and swallow, including insects, crustaceans, amphibians, mammals and birds. Chicks of other species of birds can be easy prey so they’re definitely on the menu.<\/p>\n

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Yesterday morning at Bear River MBR the parents of this Black-necked Stilt chick knew that, so with several herons in the area they and other stilts were being very protective of their offspring. By this time of year many of the stilt youngsters are fully grown, can fly, and look a lot like the adults, but yesterday I was still seeing some very young ones like this little guy.<\/p>\n

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I watched as this Great Blue Heron landed on the matted phrags but I was more interested in photographing the agitated adult stilts in flight. So I’d been tracking the adult male stilt at upper left with my lens when he suddenly veered and flew directly at the heron. When the heron unexpectedly appeared in the frame I figured there’d be some kind of confrontation so I laid on my shutter button to see what kind of action I might capture.<\/p>\n

This photo and the following four are sequential without any skips. In this first shot in the series the stilt is sharp and the heron is soft. My active focus point stuck like glue to the stilt so as the stilt got closer to the heron the larger bird became progressively sharper.<\/p>\n

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At first the heron didn’t react in the least to the incoming threat.<\/p>\n

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But that was about to change as the pissed-off stilt with a needle-like bill and flailing long legs got closer.<\/p>\n

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At this point the heron must have realized that it was smack dab in the crosshairs of an angry bird with the potential to be more than just annoying.<\/p>\n

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This is the first shot I got where both birds were sharp so wouldn’t you know it, we can’t see the heron’s eye.<\/p>\n

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At the very last moment the heron juked by ducking and snaking his head forward. The stilt tried to react by tagging the heron with his feet but I believe he missed. Not by much though.<\/p>\n

Immediately after this shot I completely lost focus on both birds but I could still tell from my blurry photos that the stilt circled around and came after the heron again.<\/p>\n

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The heron had had enough so it took off, with the highly agitated stilt in hot pursuit. After the heron was gone I could tell that it took the stilt a while to settle down because he continued to call excitedly for about 15 seconds or so.<\/p>\n

In this last shot it’s obvious why I lost and couldn’t reacquire focus on the birds. My active focus point grabbed onto the vertical reeds in the foreground and wouldn’t let go.<\/p>\n

There are some things even the R5 can’t do, at least with me at the controls.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: Image techs for most of these photos were at or near 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

An avian version of David and Goliath. With a similar result because the little guy came out on top. (8 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140117,"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":[338,334,708,394,1094],"tags":[41,49,705,6214,481,7036,140,712,7035],"class_list":["post-140109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-black-necked-stilts","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-great-blue-herons","tag-baby","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-black-necked-stilt","tag-canon-r5","tag-chick","tag-david-and-goliath","tag-fighting","tag-great-blue-heron","tag-great-blue-heron-diet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/black-necked-stilt-big-crop-6019-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-ArP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140109","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=140109"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140175,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140109\/revisions\/140175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}