{"id":146860,"date":"2023-11-19T05:59:31","date_gmt":"2023-11-19T12:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=146860"},"modified":"2023-11-19T06:35:34","modified_gmt":"2023-11-19T13:35:34","slug":"an-american-pipit-doing-pipit-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/19\/an-american-pipit-doing-pipit-things\/","title":{"rendered":"An American Pipit Doing Pipit Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

My good luck charm.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Two days ago this American Pipit allowed me to get close enough for some interesting photos. ‘He’ was on a small dirt mound in good light near a parking lot and he was cooperative enough to go about his everyday activities as if I wasn’t there.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

He did a lot of scratching. What was unusual about it was that he never closed his eye to protect it while those needle-like toenails were flailing away right next to his vulnerable eye. In my experience, birds virtually always close their eyes while they’re scratching their heads but I have a half-dozen shots almost exactly like this one where his eye is wide open. I notice little things like that.<\/p>\n

Almost immediately after this shot was taken he ran across the ground to the base of a large, flat rock along the edge of the parking lot and…<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

flew up to the top of it. He’d barely landed when he spotted something of interest.<\/p>\n

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Did you notice the tiny black ant on the rock? He sure did.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

He got it too.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Then he went back to his scratching. This time he didn’t scratch quite so close to his eye and once again, he kept it wide open without closing his regular eyelid or his nictitating membrane.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Twice, while he was on the ground and on the rock, he reacted aggressively toward what must have been another pipit flying in close to him. I never saw the other pipit because I had my eye glued to my viewfinder but this is typical pipit behavior when another one comes in too close for comfort.<\/p>\n

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1\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Then he ran to the edge of the rock and took off without warning. I missed the takeoff and flight shots because he was just too fast for this old bird photographer’s reflexes. It wasn’t even close.<\/p>\n

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I’m grateful to this bird because he was the beginning of a string of good luck. Before I found him I’d spent an hour and 20 minutes looking for interesting birds to photograph, with no luck at all. Zilch.<\/p>\n

Then this guy came along and he happened to be the first pipit I’ve photographed in two years. Ten minutes later I photographed my first Rough-legged Hawk of the season and 21 minutes after that I photographed my first dark morph Red-tailed Hawk since the summer of 2021 (I posted photos of both of those hawks<\/a><\/span><\/span> yesterday).<\/p>\n

So, after an extremely slow beginning and middle it ended up being a morning of three firsts. I’m not superstitious but if the pipit brought me good luck, I’ll take it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

My good luck charm. (8 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146867,"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":[3566,334,395],"tags":[1789,2712,7220,7219,515,256,1840,5211,311],"class_list":["post-146860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-pipits","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","tag-american-pipit","tag-anthus-rubescens","tag-eating-an-ant","tag-good-luck-charm","tag-nictitating-membrane","tag-prey","tag-scratching","tag-threat-display","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/american-pipit-5578-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-CcI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146860","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=146860"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146908,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146860\/revisions\/146908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}