{"id":162070,"date":"2024-07-20T06:22:50","date_gmt":"2024-07-20T12:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=162070"},"modified":"2024-07-20T08:06:49","modified_gmt":"2024-07-20T14:06:49","slug":"rock-wrens-on-of-all-things-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/20\/rock-wrens-on-of-all-things-rocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Rock Wrens On, Of All Things, Rocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Including several recent fledglings that are messy with spider silk, plant debris and brine flies.<\/p>\n

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Five days ago on Antelope Island I had a completely unexpected encounter with a family of Rock Wrens. They were flitting around a couple of rock piles right at sunrise but for most of the time I was with them the rock piles were still in shade, so the light was low. In an effort to have ‘enough’ shutter speed for such flitty birds, I chose to shoot at ISO 2500 and in some of these photos it shows in the image quality. Partly because some of the photos have been cropped significantly.<\/p>\n

I never could tell for sure how many wrens were in and on the rocks but there was at least one adult and at least three recent fledglings. I had the impression there were more.<\/p>\n

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At first I thought this wren was cleaning its bill but it was actually searching for tiny insects\/spiders in that crevice in the rock.<\/p>\n

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It caught one too. Here we see it in the wren’s bill. There’s another one in the crevice below and slightly in front of the tip of the bird’s bill.<\/p>\n

There’s an incredible number of spiders on that area of the island right now and their webs are everywhere. So the wrens have a very difficult time avoiding…<\/p>\n

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the webs and the tiny insects caught in them. Here we see spider silk hanging down from this bird’s throat with two tiny insects, probably brine flies, caught in it. There is more silk and more insects stuck to ‘his’ tail.<\/p>\n

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That particular bird was the one that I photographed most often so I have many photos showing his messy lower throat.<\/p>\n

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A closer look at his tagalong insects. There is spider silk above his eye and on his bill.<\/p>\n

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Most of the wrens I photographed were messy with debris of some kind. This one had some plant debris stuck to it’s throat.<\/p>\n

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Here’s a better look at it. Once again, sticky spider silk was probably involved.<\/p>\n

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There was more variation in the markings of these wrens than I expected. I suspect this bird might be an adult “wearing to dark<\/a><\/span><\/span>“.<\/p>\n

This photo was taken just as direct light finally began to hit the rock piles, and the wrens.\u00a0But right about then my good friend April Olson drove up and I hadn’t seen her for a while so visiting with April easily took priority. I came back to the rock piles later in the morning and found the wrens again but by then the light was beginning to get harsh, so I just headed for home.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Including several recent fledglings that are messy with spider silk, plant debris and brine flies. (9 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162078,"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":[3,334,392,5753],"tags":[31,729,7541,837,1572,5754,513,3450,311,1699],"class_list":["post-162070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-rock-wren","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-brine-flies","tag-eating-prey","tag-insects","tag-rock-wren","tag-salpinctes-obsoletus","tag-spider-silk","tag-spider-web","tag-utah-2","tag-wearing-to-dark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/rock-wren-8071-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Ga2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162070","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=162070"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162106,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162070\/revisions\/162106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}