{"id":159733,"date":"2024-06-04T06:01:21","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T12:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=159733"},"modified":"2024-06-04T06:27:48","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T12:27:48","slug":"a-mix-of-birds-and-a-critter-from-my-recent-trip-to-bear-river-mbr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/04\/a-mix-of-birds-and-a-critter-from-my-recent-trip-to-bear-river-mbr\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mix Of Birds And A Critter From My Recent Trip To Bear River MBR"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ten photos of ten species.<\/p>\n

Occasionally I post a collection of photos that in my view don’t deserve standalone status on my blog but collectively I believe they’ll be of interest to viewers. All of these photos were taken in the morning five days ago at Bear River MBR.<\/p>\n

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A side lit adult Black-crowned Night Heron. There was a juvenile heron right behind this bird that was spotlit nicely in the reeds but that bird was partially blocked by vegetation.<\/p>\n

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A White-faced Ibis in flight with the Promontory Mountains in the background. I wish I’d been closer to this bird.<\/p>\n

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A rooster Ring-necked Pheasant following another rooster through the grass.<\/p>\n

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A surprise Muskrat that swam by as I was photographing a nesting Western Grebe. I seldom post photos of these guys but this time I thought, why not?<\/p>\n

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The nesting Western Grebe I was photographing when the Muskrat showed up.<\/p>\n

Since Western Grebe chicks leave the nest immediately after they’re all (or mostly all) hatched, this bird would have been incubating rather than brooding young. I like the way the nest is set back into the reeds but still provides an open “window” for the incubating adult (both sexes incubate).<\/p>\n

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A Gadwall taking off from a small floating island. At first I thought there was a nest on the island but I don’t believe there was. At least not an active one.<\/p>\n

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A male Clark’s Grebe, on the left, feeding a small feather to his chick on the female’s back. Grebes are notorious for eating feathers<\/a><\/span><\/span>, their own feathers or those of other birds found floating on the water. Once again I wish I’d been closer to these birds.<\/p>\n

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A drake Cinnamon Teal being chased off the water by another drake that’s out of frame to the left. For some reason, I seldom see (or at least notice) reflections of water splashes in my photos when a bird takes off from the water. This time there is one and I noticed it.<\/p>\n

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An adult American Coot with one of its three chicks. This is the same chick I posted two photos of a couple of days ago. Several readers gently chastised this old coot (the photographer) for calling the chick “ugly”, so today I’ll refrain from doing so. But it won’t be easy.<\/p>\n

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I’ll close with some interesting behavior from an obviously mated pair of Black-necked Stilts. When I first approached them they were both foraging for food but they were more than 50′ apart from each other. Suddenly I noticed that the female was performing her pre-copulatory display by holding her body in this solicitation posture and stirring the tip of her bill in the water.<\/p>\n

Her mate noticed it too. He immediately began walking briskly toward her. This photo was taken as he reached her. I fully expected them both to go through their pre-copulatory rituals that would culminate in mating.<\/p>\n

But mating never happened. The female held this solicitation posture, while occasionally stirring her bill in the water, for what seemed like two full minutes. During that time the male circled around her several times while he was sometimes doing what’s called “sexual preening”. But he never mounted her. Eventually he just turned his back to her and flew away.<\/p>\n

I felt sorry for the female. Talk about rejection. And sexual frustration.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Ten photos of ten species.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159742,"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],"tags":[1052,49,716,705,84,88,1754,469,560,311,322,715],"class_list":["post-159733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","tag-american-coot","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-black-crowned-night-heron","tag-black-necked-stilt","tag-cinnamon-teal","tag-clarks-grebe","tag-gadwall-2","tag-muskrat","tag-ring-necked-pheasant","tag-utah-2","tag-western-grebe","tag-white-faced-ibis"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/western-grebe-0437-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Fyl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159733","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=159733"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159774,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159733\/revisions\/159774"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}