{"id":16161,"date":"2013-06-15T04:00:30","date_gmt":"2013-06-15T10:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=16161"},"modified":"2013-06-14T18:04:40","modified_gmt":"2013-06-15T00:04:40","slug":"plumage-challenged-chukar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/15\/plumage-challenged-chukar\/","title":{"rendered":"Plumage-challenged Chukar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prepare yourself.\u00a0 A couple of these shots won’t be easy on the eyes…<\/p>\n

Around here Chukars are now beginning to molt and the process lasts through much of October.\u00a0 But the molt “symptoms” that you see in\u00a0individual birds\u00a0vary dramatically throughout \u00a0the entire summer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

I took this shot of a Chukar on Antelope Island two days ago.\u00a0 I include it here as a comparison to the next image of a different bird\u00a0which was taken yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Yikes!<\/p>\n

I’ve seen many thousands of Chukars over the years but I’ve never seen one quite this hammered, even during the molt.\u00a0 For some reason the molt often seems to occur more\u00a0abruptly on the back of the lower neck but in my experience this is an extreme case.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

A closer view at a slightly different angle.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This bird seemed vigorous, healthy and active.\u00a0 It was calling and acting normally.\u00a0 I suspect that what we see here is only molting but must admit to some curiosity about other possibilities – fighting, disease and mites come to mind.<\/p>\n

So, knowing that many of you (rehabbers, falconers and others)\u00a0have much more experience\u00a0than I with molting, injured and\/or sick birds I’m wondering if some\u00a0might care to speculate (or outright diagnose) what’s going on with this\u00a0pathetic looking\u00a0creature.<\/p>\n

I’ll confess that\u00a0I laughed out loud when I first saw this bird through my\u00a0viewfinder but then I\u00a0began to have some serious empathy for it.<\/p>\n

Thanks in advance for any thoughts on the matter.<\/p>\n

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

Prepare yourself. A couple of these shots won’t be easy on the eyes…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16162,"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":[3,334,352],"tags":[26,82,749],"class_list":["post-16161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-chukars","tag-alectoris-chukar","tag-chukar","tag-molt"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/chukar-7445-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4cF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16161","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=16161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}