{"id":165643,"date":"2024-12-05T06:08:08","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T13:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=165643"},"modified":"2024-12-05T07:54:40","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T14:54:40","slug":"the-odd-couple-and-a-kingfisher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/05\/the-odd-couple-and-a-kingfisher\/","title":{"rendered":"The Odd Couple And A Kingfisher"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last few days I’ve been seeing a handsome drake Hooded Merganser at one of my favorite shooting locations but he’s wild and very shy so he’s never allowed me to get anywhere near him. Until early yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

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When I got there he was resting in a rocky nook along the shore and he was much closer than I’ve ever been to him. But wouldn’t you know, there was a photobombing hen Mallard right behind him and neither duck had any intention of moving away from each other anytime soon. They look so different and they were so sticky with each other, I think of them as the odd couple.<\/p>\n

After a long time, when the Mallard performed a wing stretch I decided to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation, take advantage of the show-off Mallard and fire off a few shots. I couldn’t decide which bird to focus on, but I was already focused on the Hoodie and he was in front so that’s where I stayed.<\/p>\n

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I think I prefer a vertical composition of the same photo, in part because it makes the Mallard smaller in the frame and appear a little less soft.<\/p>\n

I kept hoping that the two ducks would move apart from each other so I could get some shots of the Hoodie, sans Mallard, but in 36 minutes it never happened. Then, toward the end, I started hearing a Belted Kingfisher chattering behind me. For nearly ten minutes I was torn between staying with the Hoodie and backing my pickup up to give me a chance at the kingfisher.<\/p>\n

Eventually I succumbed to the kingfisher temptation. That noisy bird was impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n

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It turned out to be a female Belted Kingfisher fishing from a high perch. I was after diving shots of course but while I was with her she never did dive on a fish.\u00a0So after a while I pulled forward to photograph the Hoodie again but by then, both Hoodie and Mallard were gone.<\/p>\n

The life of a bird photographer, filled with missing birds. uncooperative birds and photobombers.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Finally, I got close to the Hoodie. And then, wouldn’t you know… (3 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165644,"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":[2853,334,4406,1172],"tags":[7291,7277,7694,7695,311],"class_list":["post-165643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belted-kingfishers","category-birds","category-hooded-mergansers","category-mallard-waterfowl","tag-drake-hooded-merganser","tag-female-belted-kingfisher","tag-hen-mallard","tag-photobomber","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/belted-kingfisher-5654-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-H5F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165643","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=165643"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165679,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165643\/revisions\/165679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}