{"id":15430,"date":"2013-05-20T03:41:44","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T09:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=15430"},"modified":"2013-05-20T10:37:02","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T16:37:02","slug":"american-kestrel-with-peeling-beak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/20\/american-kestrel-with-peeling-beak\/","title":{"rendered":"American Kestrel With Peeling Beak"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve never before posted this image because of the “imperfection” of the peeling beak tip of this male American Kestrel.\u00a0 It’s possible that in this case it’s food debris rather than a peeling beak but I doubt it because this bird had been preening and made no attempt to clean off the beak that I noticed.<\/p>\n

Bird beaks are largely composed of the protein keratin and like our fingernails are constantly growing.\u00a0 This can apparently cause flaking or peeling of the beak but I don’t understand why and so far\u00a0internet research hasn’t provided the answer.\u00a0\u00a0Something else that intrigues me is the fact that I’ve observed this beak peeling or flaking quite often in kestrels but I’ve seldom if ever\u00a0noticed it\u00a0in other raptors (or even non-raptors).\u00a0 I’m wondering if any falconors or rehabbers may have some insight as to why\u00a0beak peeling occurs in the first place\u00a0(after all, healthy fingernails don’t\u00a0peel)\u00a0\u00a0and why the condition seems to be more common (or noticeable) in kestrels than in other birds.\u00a0 I’m aware that beak flaking can be caused by a diet deficient in certain amino acids (especially in captive birds) but I doubt that explains what I see in so many wild\u00a0kestrels.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 r\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I also had a bit of a dilemma related to the composition of this image – notice that the bird is centered vertically in the frame.\u00a0 I could have cropped to move the kestrel lower in the frame but that would have meant two things: a), I’d have to add canvas to the image up top and b), the small broken twig tip on the right would then poke into the frame from bottom so I’d have had to clone it out.\u00a0 Both would have been easy to do but I’m reluctant to\u00a0perform\u00a0this kind of heavy-handed processing if it’s not\u00a0really necessary.<\/p>\n

So I’m wondering how much of a visual distraction (for lack of a better phrase)\u00a0the vertically centered bird really is.\u00a0 I’m truly aesthetically challenged by these types of things and know that many of my readers are much more schooled in the rules of composition than I am.\u00a0 I realize that “rules are meant to be broken” at times but is this one of them?\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps the vertically centered bird is only a very minor issue (or not)?<\/p>\n

Thanks for any insight on beak peeling and opinions about the composition (as usual, the “learning” on this blog is a two-way street).<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Addendum:\u00a0\u00a0 Since several of you are having a difficult time seeing what I thought was beak peeling I’m realizing that I probably shouldn’t have brought it up if I didn’t have a better photo that showed it in more detail.\u00a0 What I’m seeing is only on the very tip of the beak but perhaps in this case it’s only food debris after all.\u00a0 I’ve looked for other images that show it better but those were taken before I started blogging and stupidly I deleted them for their “imperfections”.\u00a0\u00a0 Live and learn…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve never before posted this image because of the “imperfection” of the peeling beak tip of this male American Kestrel. Bird beaks are largely composed of the protein keratin and like our fingernails are constantly growing. This can apparently cause flaking or peeling of the beak but I don’t understand why and so far internet research hasn’t provided the answer.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15431,"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":[340,334],"tags":[28,1470,1469,865,916,131,682],"class_list":["post-15430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-birds","tag-american-kestrel","tag-beak-flaking","tag-beak-peeling","tag-cloning","tag-composition","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-keratin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/american-kestrel-4760-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-40S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15430","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=15430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}