{"id":15960,"date":"2013-06-09T07:28:35","date_gmt":"2013-06-09T13:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=15960"},"modified":"2013-06-09T07:35:11","modified_gmt":"2013-06-09T13:35:11","slug":"northern-flicker-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/09\/northern-flicker-surprise\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Flicker Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

On day five of our recent Montana camping trip we’d heard of a Ferruginous Hawk nest that might be photographed at eye level close to a road so I decided to drive the two hours required to make the attempt.\u00a0 On the way we investigated a favorite\u00a0area\u00a0from previous trips to see what might turn up.<\/p>\n

We were parked along a heavily used\u00a0dirt road in a National Forest on the edge of a steep bank below us\u00a0as we photographed\u00a0Pine Siskins and other songbirds and had noticed several holes of varying sizes in some half-dead Aspens rising out of the deep gully to our left but they seemed to be unoccupied so we mostly ignored them.\u00a0 But a while later I glanced down at one of the holes again and noticed that it seemed to have disappeared or changed shape and color.\u00a0 Closer inspection revealed the reason for the change – the hole was now filled by a gorgeous Northern Flicker looking back at us with one big eye.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/200, f\/10, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I was very close.\u00a0 Too close, since I still had my teleconverter attached but of course I took the shot anyway.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This male\u00a0(red malar under eye)\u00a0watched us from the hole for\u00a0a few minutes and then flew off.\u00a0\u00a0 We continued to photograph other birds in the general area as we moved up and down the road.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/800, f\/10, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A\u00a0half hour later the flicker returned and watched us with interest for a few minutes before it…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/640, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

returned to the same hole as before.<\/p>\n

Despite the regular traffic and flying dust along this road and the multiple holes in the Aspens in the\u00a0 area we began to wonder if this bird was actually nesting in this one so we moved on in case we might be making it nervous.\u00a0 Both sexes incubate but the male does so at night and the female by day so perhaps the female was in the nest and the male was checking up on her.<\/p>\n

I was very happy to get these shots.\u00a0 Northern Flickers are common near my home but I find them to be uncooperative and mostly unapproachable and up to this point I had only a handful of images of the species that I liked and even those were in an urban setting.\u00a0 I much prefer a more natural setting like this.<\/p>\n

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

A while later I glanced down at one of the holes again and noticed that it seemed to have disappeared or changed shape and color. Closer inspection revealed the reason for the change – the hole was now filled by a gorgeous Northern Flicker looking back at us with one big eye.<\/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":[334,1493,391,1496],"tags":[1498,1497,220,228,1144],"class_list":["post-15960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-nesting-and-mating","category-northern-flickers","tag-aspens","tag-colaptes-auretus","tag-montana-2","tag-nest","tag-northern-flicker"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-49q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15960","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=15960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}