{"id":162884,"date":"2024-08-09T06:20:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-09T12:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=162884"},"modified":"2024-08-09T08:35:00","modified_gmt":"2024-08-09T14:35:00","slug":"my-recent-morning-on-antelope-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/09\/my-recent-morning-on-antelope-island\/","title":{"rendered":"My Recent Morning On Antelope Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Birds, bugs and fire scars.<\/p>\n

Two days ago I spent most of the morning on Antelope Island. For much of that time I was right on the edge of a huge cloud bank pushing down from the north, so I was often dealing with mediocre light. While chasing the light I spent more time on the south part of the island than I usually do, even though birds are harder to find and approach down there. Most of whatever success I had was up north, despite the often-challenging lighting conditions.<\/p>\n

The photos below are presented in the order they were taken. Image file numbers aren’t always sequential because I was using three different cameras.<\/p>\n

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My first stop was at some rock piles where I often find Rock Wrens. At first the wrens were a no show.but it didn’t take long for this Loggerhead Shrike to pop up right in front of me. The shrike held this pose for a very long time (I have several dozen shots like this one) because ‘he’ was…<\/p>\n

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hunting the pile of rocks directly in front of him. This guy knows how to concentrate.<\/p>\n

In this version of the photo we can see at least five separate rocks. Notice the rock in the middle, the mostly white one at bottom. When the shrike eventually gave up his hunting spot and flew off, it didn’t take long before…<\/p>\n

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a Rock Wren landed on that mostly white rock. This bird was a singer. I photographed it singing on…<\/p>\n

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at least three different rock perches.<\/p>\n

After this shot I left the rock pile to look for other birds but ten minutes later when I returned I found…<\/p>\n

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this juvenile Rock Wren on yet another rock. These little birds are really fast but I got lucky when it took off.<\/p>\n

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Next I spent some time with Wilson’s Phalaropes feeding on brine shrimp. Most of the phalaropes were using their patented “spinning” techniqe to create water current vortices that draw brine shrimp up from the bottom.<\/p>\n

But this bird was hunting 100% visually by remaining in one place, without spinning, and looking down into the water for individual shrimp. When it would see one within reach it would make a stab at it.<\/p>\n

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There were kabillions of dead and dying brine flies on the shore only a few feet away, but the phalaropes showed no interest in them. Other birds did, but not the phalaropes.<\/p>\n

I know, that white ‘rock’ at left looks like a dead bird. A dead bird with its eyes open. \ud83d\ude42<\/em><\/p>\n

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I have no idea how this phalarope came up with a spider, but it did. Perhaps the spider fell into the water near the shore and floated close to the phalarope.<\/p>\n

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There were lots of Western Meadowlarks on the north end of the island but without exception they were spooky and uncooperative.<\/p>\n

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The first Prairie Falcon I’ve seen on the island in a very long time.<\/p>\n

As I was approaching the causeway with the intent to go home, I decided to document the fire scar from the wildfire that broke out near the visitor center on July 23rd.<\/p>\n

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From this elevated shooting position we see the visitor center on the left. The fire started near the visitor center and raced all the way down the hill to the road at right. It burned mostly sagebrush habitat but at this angle we can’t see a large part of the scar on the back side of the hill.<\/p>\n

In 2008 the very first Burrowing Owls I ever saw on the island had their burrow next to the largest rock pile at center and slightly right. I saw those owls on the rocks many times until one day when they were no longer there and I never saw them again. When I eventually asked a park employee what happened to them, he said that they were “loved to death” by the visiting public.<\/p>\n

Notice the white “x” I’ve placed along the road at right. That’s approximately where I was when I…<\/p>\n

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took this photo a few minutes later. Here we see the visitor center at upper right and the large rocks the Burrowing Owls always used to hang out on. Sharp eyes will also notice the red piece of heavy equipment involved in the construction of the new visitor center at upper right.<\/p>\n

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This photo was taken from about where the causeway road, at left, joins the island. The 59 acre fire burned further west and over the hill at right than we can see. Notice the habitat damage apparently caused by fighting the fire and more heavy equipment being used to build the new visitor center next to the old one.<\/p>\n

The fire was “human caused” and “still under investigation” in the last reports made public. The fire started “near the visitor center” and many of us suspect it was started by construction activities at the site of the new visitor center, but we don’t know that. I’m sure that by now ‘they’ know exactly how it started but they still haven’t made it public.<\/p>\n

Hmmm, I wonder why. If it had been deliberately set or started by a careless camper you can bet we’d know about it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: Recently several readers have gently prodded me to use most any color other than red when I use a colored “x’ to mark a spot in one of my photos. Apparently some color blind readers have difficulty seeing red. So today I used a white “x’ in photo #10 instead of a red one.<\/em><\/p>\n

See, I do listen to my readers… \ud83d\ude42<\/em><\/p>\n

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Birds, bugs and fire scars. (12 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162894,"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":[3,334,8,392],"tags":[31,1928,7577,206,7575,292,323,7578,7576],"class_list":["post-162884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-burrowing-owls-2","tag-dead-brine-flies","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-rock-wrens","tag-spider","tag-western-meadowlark","tag-what-was-the-cause-of-the-antelope-island-wildfire","tag-wilsons-phalarope-feeding-technique"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/rock-wren-1711-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Gna","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162884","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=162884"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162958,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162884\/revisions\/162958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}