{"id":165818,"date":"2024-12-14T06:19:08","date_gmt":"2024-12-14T13:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=165818"},"modified":"2024-12-14T07:53:12","modified_gmt":"2024-12-14T14:53:12","slug":"mallard-drake-in-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/14\/mallard-drake-in-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Mallard Drake In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late yesterday afternoon I was watching and listening carefully to a very large flock of Canada Geese for any sign of imminent takeoff from the water. I knew that they often leave the pond en masse at about 3:30 PM to go elsewhere for the night and I was after takeoff and flight shots. My primary goal was to get flight shots of geese with the snow-covered Wasatch Mountains in the background.<\/p>\n

At precisely 3:32 some of the geese started honking excitedly, which is usually a precursor for takeoff. Seconds later, several hundred geese took off and headed southwest – a phenomenon that in some circles is known as “blast-off<\/a><\/span><\/span>“.<\/p>\n

The pandemonium caused by a couple of hundred 10 lb. geese trying to become airborne apparently caused a pair of Mallards to take off too. By then the geese were past me so I tried for grab shots of the Mallards.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The male of the pair was in the lead so I focused on him. I ended up getting about a half dozen sharp photos of him in flight but in most of them there were other birds, in flight and on the water, in the background which ruined those shots. But two of them, if I cropped tightly, had no recognizable birds in the background.<\/p>\n

As you may have guessed, those fuzzy black blobs in the background are coots on the far shore.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This is my favorite of the two, largely because of the beautiful iridescent colors of the head and speculum<\/a><\/span><\/span> of the drake.<\/p>\n

It’s funny, and it probably isn’t logical, but I nearly always completely ignore Mallards on the water but when either sex is in flight I get just as excited about them as I do about most any other bird.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I usually ignore Mallards on the water but it’s another story when they’re in flight. Drakes especially. (2 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165820,"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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[334,1172],"tags":[1173,7700,146,6681,7123,311],"class_list":["post-165818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-mallard-waterfowl","tag-anas-platyrhynchos","tag-blast-off","tag-flight","tag-mallard-drake","tag-speculum-color","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/mallard-7131-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-H8u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165818"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165847,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165818\/revisions\/165847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}