{"id":16495,"date":"2013-06-27T04:57:21","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T10:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=16495"},"modified":"2013-06-27T05:20:25","modified_gmt":"2013-06-27T11:20:25","slug":"chukar-free-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/27\/chukar-free-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"Chukar Free Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

No great photography this morning but this Chukar just might bring a smile to your face.<\/p>\n

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

Three days ago I approached this\u00a0bird with ambivalence.\u00a0 I had a clear view of the Chukar on the elevated perch and it let me get close but it was side lit, facing away from me and the rock perch was\u00a0bright and not very attractive.\u00a0 I took a few\u00a0shots that I was unenthusiastic about\u00a0(I include this image only for context)\u00a0but I mostly just watched.<\/p>\n

And then something fun happened.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"chukar<\/a>When Chukars decide to leave a perch they seldom fly from it – instead they tend to jump to the ground and scurry away through the vegetation.\u00a0 But this boulder was huge\u00a0and steep\u00a0and it was a long way to the ground so this bird attempted to negotiate the boulder for as long as it could before jumping.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

This first slope was so steep that the Chukar couldn’t get enough traction to walk down it – instead it slid down the incline with its feet sticking straight out in front of it, almost\u00a0in cartoon fashion.\u00a0 It slid like this for almost two feet down the rock.\u00a0 Both Mia and I immediately broke out in laughter and I almost missed the rest of the shots as a result.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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

And then the already very steep slope turned vertical and it was still a long way to the ground…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

so the Chukar did something I seldom see them do – it used its wings to soften the fall.\u00a0 This bird isn’t taking off – its falling almost straight down.\u00a0 I cropped the image to emphasize the boulder that the Chukar had to negotiate.<\/p>\n

Birds are unpredictable subjects so occasionally a less than ideal photographic situation can morph into something interesting.\u00a0 The photographer has to be ready for action when it happens (and avoid laughter, if possible…).<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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

No great photography this morning but this Chukar just might bring a smile to your face.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16500,"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":[26,82,1230],"class_list":["post-16495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-chukars","tag-alectoris-chukar","tag-chukar","tag-jump"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/chukar-9167-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4i3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16495","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=16495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}