{"id":14901,"date":"2013-05-01T05:35:02","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T11:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=14901"},"modified":"2013-05-01T05:35:02","modified_gmt":"2013-05-01T11:35:02","slug":"a-pleasant-surprise-amongst-the-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/a-pleasant-surprise-amongst-the-flowers\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pleasant Surprise Amongst The Flowers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Parts of Antelope Island are simply covered with tiny purple flowers right now and I often look for opportunities to photograph birds in such a setting.<\/p>\n

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\"yellow<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Two days ago I found a small flock of Yellow-headed Blackbirds foraging in a particularly dense patch of them and couldn’t resist firing off a few shots.\u00a0 The birds\u00a0 weren’t\u00a0very close but I hoped that with the flowers in the setting it wouldn’t be necessary to get the birds particularly large in the frame.<\/p>\n

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\"yellow<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The blackbirds were apparently feeding mostly on these small, green insect larvae.\u00a0 There must have been a bunch of them because the birds were very actively feeding.<\/p>\n

After a few minutes we begin to hear soft calls of a Killdeer.\u00a0 Killdeer don’t call softly very often, they’re usually much louder (an early common name for them was “Noisy Plover”) so for a short time the call barely registered with us as we\u00a0photographed the blackbirds.<\/p>\n

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\"killdeer<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

After a few minutes we became more aware of the call and the fact that its source was very close to us but at first we couldn’t locate the bird.\u00a0 Then we spotted it on the ground and among the flowers and it was much closer to us than the blackbirds were.\u00a0 I was surprised at how difficult it had been to spot with it so near and us having the ability to hone in on the sound.<\/p>\n

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\"killdeer<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

At first the bird seemed relatively unconcerned by our presence and even stopped to preen several times.<\/p>\n

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\"killdeer<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But eventually it began to show some signs of agitation at our presence…<\/p>\n

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\"killdeer<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

and began to call nervously as it sometimes approached us even closer rather than moving further away.\u00a0 All this made us wonder if it had a nest nearby…<\/p>\n

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\"killdeer<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 100-400 @ 400mm,\u00a0natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Which turned out to be the case.\u00a0 Killdeer often build their nest (scrape) next to an object like this rock.\u00a0 Twice the bird squatted on the same spot like this and then left again.\u00a0 When we became aware of the nest we left the area to give the bird some peace and security.<\/p>\n

I have no idea if there were eggs in the nest and didn’t approach it to find out.\u00a0 Killdeer often make several scrapes before choosing which one to use for nesting but\u00a0both sexes are usually present during that process and this bird was alone at the time.\u00a0 I also don’t know if this was the female or the male as the sexes are alike and they both incubate the eggs.<\/p>\n

I guess there’s nothing momentous about this post but after such a hard, cold and long winter and early spring I was delighted to photograph two species among the pretty little flowers and I was heartened by the nesting activities of the\u00a0Killdeer as evidence that spring has finally sprung.<\/p>\n

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

Parts of Antelope Island are simply covered with tiny purple flowers right now and I often look for opportunities to photograph birds in such a setting.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[334,1199,897],"tags":[31,114,1422,696,228,1423,987,898],"class_list":["post-14901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-killdeer-shore-birds","category-yellow-headed-blackbirds","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-dummy-nest","tag-flowers","tag-killdeer","tag-nest","tag-scrape","tag-sexes","tag-yellow-headed-blackbird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3Sl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14901","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=14901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}