{"id":159489,"date":"2024-05-30T04:24:21","date_gmt":"2024-05-30T10:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=159489"},"modified":"2024-05-30T04:24:21","modified_gmt":"2024-05-30T10:24:21","slug":"snowy-egret-rousing-and-fishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/05\/30\/snowy-egret-rousing-and-fishing\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowy Egret Rousing And Fishing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mostly fishing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Three days ago on my long trip to the west desert this Snowy Egret was a surprise find on a pond where I rarely (as in almost never) see them. ‘He’ was pretty close and the sun was behind me so there was no way I wasn’t going to stop for him. He gave me some static reflection poses like this one but I was hoping he’d get used to my presence, relax a little, and maybe give me a little action. Like fishing perhaps.<\/p>\n

But I knew that getting quality photos would be a challenge. I didn’t find him until 10:07 AM, 4 hours after sunrise on a cloudless, intensely sunny day, so the light was already harsh – a terrible situation to try to get a good exposure on a brilliantly white bird. I did what I could, including shooting at -2 EV for these shots, but I sure wish I’d found him earlier.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

When birds rouse I always fire off a burst in the hope of…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

capturing a shot or two like this one, with feathers going every which way.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He was chasing fish all over that pond. His incredibly fast, herky-jerky movements made it very difficult for me to avoid clipping body parts, of the bird and\/or his reflection.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In this case he missed the fish, but after the strike he could still see it in the water so he…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

wheeled around 180\u00b0 and chased it in the other direction but he still didn’t catch it. In the nine minutes I spent with him I only saw him catch one tiny fish. Lots of work for very little return.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is the beginning of another instantaneous 180\u00b0 turn. Notice how the base of his neck is twisted. To me it almost looks like his lower neck is becoming detached from his body.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A pretty good look at his signature “golden slippers”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I’m including this shot just because I like the symmetry of bird and reflection.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We’ll end the way we began, with a rouse. This time he doesn’t look quite so… discombobulated.<\/p>\n

Soon after I took this photo he took off and flew to the back of the pond where he was too far away for photos. And I headed for home. Next time, if there is a next time, I hope to find this bird or one of his buddies earlier in the morning.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Mostly fishing. (10 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159493,"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":[334,375],"tags":[1444,2161,1501,7474,311,533],"class_list":["post-159489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-snowy-egrets","tag-egretta-thula","tag-golden-slippers","tag-rousing","tag-snowy-egret-fishing","tag-utah-2","tag-west-desert"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/snowy-egret-9560-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Fup","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159489","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=159489"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159525,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159489\/revisions\/159525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}