{"id":157571,"date":"2024-04-21T06:05:47","date_gmt":"2024-04-21T12:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=157571"},"modified":"2024-04-21T09:07:41","modified_gmt":"2024-04-21T15:07:41","slug":"some-recent-birds-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/04\/21\/some-recent-birds-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Recent Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nine photos of eight species.<\/p>\n

Occasionally I post a collection of recent bird photos I’ve taken that may not be worthy of standalone status on my blog but still deserve to be seen. And hopefully enjoyed. Each of these photos was taken in northern Utah within the last ten days.<\/p>\n

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A Western Meadowlark preening soon after sunrise. In this situation, birds usually have their eyes partially or completely closed but this time the bird’s left eye was open and I even got light in the eye. I like the visual tension provided by the plant stems leaning one direction with the bird’s wing pointed in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

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An adult Red-tailed Hawk in flight. This is one of the few red-tails I’ve photographed this spring.<\/p>\n

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A Rock Wren that simply refused to come in close so this photo has been cropped significantly. I like the rocky perch and lichen colors.<\/p>\n

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A Killdeer incubating eggs in its nest on the edge of a remote dirt road. Yes, I’m concerned about the vulnerability of the nest. At least the nest is incredibly well camouflaged but that won’t protect it from vehicles, including the occasional huge truck. I wish I could pick the nest up and move it about two feet to the west.<\/p>\n

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A Sandhill Crane skimming low over the phrags. At times the crane’s wingtips were below the phrag plumes and partially hidden by them. I believe my active focus point locked onto the bird’s left wingtip so its head isn’t quite sharp.<\/p>\n

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A mated pair of Northern Shovelers in tandem flight. I wish I’d been closer.<\/p>\n

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Another Western Meadowlark soon after takeoff from sagebrush. Once again, the head of the bird is a little soft.<\/p>\n

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A mated pair of Clark’s Grebes in a tender moment. The larger male is on the right.<\/p>\n

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A mama Great Horned Owl trying to keep her chicks warm in the bitter cold at the crack of dawn.<\/p>\n

It was 29\u00b0 F. and there was a biting breeze so while I was there the youngsters never even poked their heads up. When this photo was taken the orb of the rising sun had only partially cleared the faraway mountains to the east. Only seconds later the light was so warm the entire setting turned red. This is the first photo I got where there was enough light on the owl to put a visible catch light in her eye, which in this light looks almost black.<\/p>\n

The eyes of adults are actually “bright lemon chrome yellow” but you’d never know it from this photo.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Nine photos of eight species.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157572,"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":[3,334,735,405,1199,391,1271,450,5753,1128],"tags":[88,7424,7423,584,451,1572,743,311,323],"class_list":["post-157571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-clarks-grebes","category-great-horned-owls-owls","category-killdeer-shore-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-northern-shovelers","category-red-tailed-hawks","category-rock-wren","category-sandhill-cranes","tag-clarks-grebe","tag-great-horned-owl-nest","tag-killdeer-nest","tag-northern-shoveler","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-rock-wren","tag-sandhill-crane","tag-utah-2","tag-western-meadowlark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/clarks-grebe-1502-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-EZt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157571","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=157571"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157633,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157571\/revisions\/157633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}