{"id":16561,"date":"2013-06-29T06:00:58","date_gmt":"2013-06-29T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=16561"},"modified":"2013-06-29T06:00:58","modified_gmt":"2013-06-29T12:00:58","slug":"the-sage-thrasher-and-the-wasp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/29\/the-sage-thrasher-and-the-wasp\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sage Thrasher And The Wasp"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning I was once again able to find a cooperative Sage Thrasher singing on territory.\u00a0 And this time the bird treated me to an impressive display of its marathon singing ability.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1\/ ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In a previous post\u00a0<\/a>about Sage Thrashers I noted the tendency of the species to sing in long, uninterrupted bouts of several minutes.\u00a0 I’ve seldom heard them sing from close up\u00a0because they’re so elusive when I approach but this bird chose to disavow that tendency and sang uninterrupted and enthusiastically for perhaps\u00a03 minutes while it was perched quite near to me.\u00a0 Their songs appear to function in both mate attraction and maintenance of territory and I suspect that this display may have been for the benefit of another male thrasher in the area.<\/p>\n

Like mockingbirds, Sage Thrashers are mimics of the songs of other species, particularly the Western Meadowlark, Brewer’s Sparrow and Horned Lark.\u00a0 Interspersed into the other notes of its song, this bird very distinctly mimicked the\u00a0alarm call of the Willet.\u00a0 Willets are common residents of Antelope Island in spring and summer and their calls are commonly heard on the island, especially during nesting season.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1\/ ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But the best fun of the morning was provided by this wasp as it unexpectedly intruded on the personal space of the thrasher.\u00a0 The gaze of the bird locked on to the wasp like radar.\u00a0 During summer Sage Thrashers are primarily insect eaters but I don’t know if\u00a0the birds intense interest in the wasp was because of the potential meal it might provide or for fear of being stung.\u00a0 In the end the thrasher made no attempt at snagging the wasp out of the\u00a0air\u00a0and the insect continued on its way.<\/p>\n

I’ve had two close encounters with this elusive species in recent days.\u00a0 One just never knows when bad luck is going to change for the better.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

The best fun of the morning was provided by this wasp as it unexpectedly intruded on the personal space of the thrasher. The gaze of the bird locked on to the wasp like radar.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16562,"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":[3,334,379],"tags":[1542,1535,271,289,410],"class_list":["post-16561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-sage-thrashers","tag-mimic","tag-oreoscoptes-montanus","tag-sage-thrasher","tag-song","tag-wasp"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/sage-thrasher-9483-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4j7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16561","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=16561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}