{"id":163076,"date":"2024-08-13T06:04:30","date_gmt":"2024-08-13T12:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=163076"},"modified":"2024-08-13T06:15:13","modified_gmt":"2024-08-13T12:15:13","slug":"battle-scarred-chukars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/13\/battle-scarred-chukars\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle-scarred Chukars"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m still learning stuff about birds from my older photos.<\/p>\n

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Yesterday morning while I was searching for an image to fill a print request for a client I came across this older photo of a Chukar on Antelope Island. I lingered on it for several minutes because I was enjoying all the colors, including the greens. The setting of most Chukar photos I take doesn’t include any green so I found this photo refreshing, for lack of a better word.<\/p>\n

Then my attention went to the dark, splotchy spots on the Chukar’s neck. I remembered that when I took the photo I assumed those spots were early signs of molting or perhaps of “wearing to dark<\/a><\/span><\/span>“. But the photo was taken the second week of May so this bird’s plumage should have been relatively fresh, which would eliminate molting and wearing to dark as the cause of the splotchiness.<\/p>\n

Then I remembered some of the Chukar fights I’ve seen and photographed. I now believe this Chukar was battle-scarred.<\/p>\n

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Chukar fights are extraordinarily vicious and these birds seem to have a penchant for trying to rip out the neck feathers of their opponents. In this photo the Chukar at top has a beak-full of the other bird’s lower neck feathers. I remember that feathers were flying during this fight.<\/p>\n

Fair warning: The photo below isn’t easy to look at.<\/p>\n

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This is the most battle-scarred Chukar I\u2019ve ever seen. The image was taken in the second week of June which is earlier than Chukars on the island generally molt, so I\u2019m relatively sure this isn\u2019t some bizarre molting pattern in this individual bird. I very much doubt it\u2019s the result of disease as this bird seemed vigorous and healthy. He\u2019s calling enthusiastically and apparently spoiling for another fight.<\/p>\n

The curse of testosterone, I’d say. Or at least one of them.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I’m still learning stuff about birds from my older photos. (3 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22964,"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":[3,334,352,394],"tags":[26,31,7581,7580,7582,311],"class_list":["post-163076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-chukars","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","tag-alectoris-chukar","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-chukar-battle-scars","tag-fighting-chukars","tag-the-curse-of-testosterone","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/chukar-6333-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Gqg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163076","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=163076"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163097,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163076\/revisions\/163097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}