{"id":158228,"date":"2024-05-03T06:03:10","date_gmt":"2024-05-03T12:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=158228"},"modified":"2024-05-03T06:55:41","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T12:55:41","slug":"avian-potpourri-from-antelope-island-three-days-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/05\/03\/avian-potpourri-from-antelope-island-three-days-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"Avian Potpourri From Antelope Island Three Days Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eight photos of five species plus a short video clip.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday of this week I spent the morning on Antelope Island. I had some frustrations with my camera that morning (the Canon R5 often struggles with sharpness in low light) but I got some photos I thought were interesting enough to share. Following are eight of them.<\/p>\n

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Several of the male Northern Mockingbirds were engaged in their well known “flight displays”. I found this guy displaying right after sunrise so the light was low and to complicate matters he was sidelit. So it was a difficult shooting situation but I got several shots that documented part of the display.<\/p>\n

Following is how Cornell’s Birds of the World describes the behavior:<\/p>\n

“A \u201cflight display\u201d is given from a high singing perch. A singing male jumps upward, flaps his wings once or several times, ascends a meter or two above the perch, and then parachutes down, wings open, onto the same or a nearby perch. White wing patches are conspicuous during the display, and the bird sings continuously.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Here he had just launched himself upward but I didn’t catch him singing in flight.<\/p>\n

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This photo was taken a couple of minutes later as he vaulted into the air from the same perch and this time I did get him singing. He would sing on his way up and on his way down.<\/p>\n

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Another strongly side-lit bird, this time a Chukar. I’m not fond of the grass stem at the tip of the tail or the out-of-focus rock in the foreground but I seldom see Chukars anymore so getting this one in my viewfinder and close was a somewhat momentous occasion.<\/p>\n

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I’m on a side-lit roll. This Loggerhead Shrike perched on greasewood simply refused to turn on its perch and give me a broadside view. But I got Great Salt Lake in the background, which I’m a sucker for.<\/p>\n

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A Burrowing Owl greeting the rising sun on the dirt mound next to its burrow. This bird is a near-celebrity on the island because its burrow is so close to one of the roads. I’m pleasantly surprised that it hasn’t abandoned the burrow in favor of a more isolated location.<\/p>\n

There’s blood on its bill so maybe it’s fond of this location because it’s eating well.<\/p>\n

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A singing Western Meadowlark, once again with the lake in the background. This bird was quite cooperative, giving me a variety of poses including…<\/p>\n

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a mini wing stretch.<\/p>\n

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I couldn’t help laughing when it performed this stiff-legged double leg stretch. Silly bird.<\/p>\n

If you’re interested, I took a short (10 second) video of this bird<\/a><\/span><\/span> as it was rousing and singing. Yes, the video is tilted so it looks like the lake in the lower background is about to spill out of frame to the left.<\/p>\n

I’ve got to learn to pay more attention to keeping my camera level, especially when taking video.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Eight photos of five species plus a short video clip.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158233,"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":[334,365,352,346,4267,370],"tags":[7438,62,82,160,206,7439,702,311,323],"class_list":["post-158228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-burrowing-owls","category-chukars","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","category-northern-mockingbirds","category-western-meadowlarks","tag-antelipe-island","tag-burrowing-owl","tag-chukar","tag-great-salt-lake","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-mockingbird-flight-display","tag-northern-mockingbird","tag-utah-2","tag-western-meadowlark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/northern-mockingbird-5087-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Fa4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158228","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=158228"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158272,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158228\/revisions\/158272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}