{"id":165556,"date":"2024-12-01T05:30:50","date_gmt":"2024-12-01T12:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=165556"},"modified":"2024-12-01T05:30:50","modified_gmt":"2024-12-01T12:30:50","slug":"belted-kingfisher-diving-sequence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/01\/belted-kingfisher-diving-sequence\/","title":{"rendered":"Belted Kingfisher Diving Sequence"},"content":{"rendered":"

This kingfisher has been trying my patience.<\/p>\n

I’ve been seeing a female Belted Kingfisher from a distance when I visit a particular area on and near the Jordan River. Typical of kingfishers she’s spooky as hell, so each time I visit I alter my stalking strategy in hopes of getting closer.<\/p>\n

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Six days ago she finally allowed me to get a little closer while she was fishing. She was still too far away for good detail on perched shots but I figured that if I could catch her in flight as she dove on a fish, her outspread wings might fill enough of the frame to give me some photos I like reasonably well. And if I could keep<\/span> her in frame and in focus during a dive, the closer she got to the fish she was after the closer she’d be to me.<\/p>\n

It worked, up to a point. On this dive I got 11 sharp shots of her after she took off after a fish. Today I’m presenting 5 of the 11 shots in the order they were taken – the five where her wings were spread enough to fill more of the frame.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

At first her dive was pretty steep.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This flight posture shows her working hard to gain speed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But then the fish she was after must have disappeared in the depths because she began to pull out of the dive and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

abandon her attempt, as indicated by her nearly horizontal flight path in this final shot. At this point, because my lens had been following her at a steeper angle, I began to cut off body parts at the top of the frame. She ended up landing in a faraway tree without diving into the water.<\/p>\n

Since that morning six days ago I’ve found her four more times but each time she was either too far away, or she flew off as I approached or she was buried in twigs and branches.<\/p>\n

I intend to keep trying.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

This female kingfisher has been trying my patience. (5 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165561,"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":[2853,334],"tags":[2329,6648,146,188,2330,311],"class_list":["post-165556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belted-kingfishers","category-birds","tag-belted-kingfisher","tag-diving-on-a-fish","tag-flight","tag-jordan-river","tag-megaceryle-alcyon","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/belted-kingfisher-4558-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-H4g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165556","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=165556"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165600,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165556\/revisions\/165600"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}