{"id":165890,"date":"2024-12-18T06:15:31","date_gmt":"2024-12-18T13:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=165890"},"modified":"2024-12-18T07:59:54","modified_gmt":"2024-12-18T14:59:54","slug":"belted-kingfisher-adapting-to-obstacles-during-a-dive-on-a-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/18\/belted-kingfisher-adapting-to-obstacles-during-a-dive-on-a-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"Belted Kingfisher Adapting To Obstacles During A Dive On A Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Belted Kingfishers dive on a fish from an elevated perch they need to get to the fish quickly, before it disappears in the depths. The powerful initial speed burst requires plenty of room around them for their wings to open and extend both vertically and horizontally. But sometimes obstacles, usually branches and twigs, prevent their wings from fully opening so they have to adapt.<\/p>\n

The first two photos below are older photos I’ll use to document typical takeoffs where the kingfisher has plenty of room to open its wings. The last four photos, taken ten days ago, document a female kingfisher taking off after a fish when obstacles prevented her from fully opening her wings.<\/p>\n

So she had to adapt, which slowed her down.<\/p>\n

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Kingfishers need to accelerate quickly on a dive so if there’s room for their wings to fully open vertically, they use it. This is the beginning of the first wing flap in a dive on a fish.<\/p>\n

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This is the mid-point of the first wing flap in a dive on a fish. Here the wings are fully flared and extended horizontally (relative to the kingfisher), providing an initial burst of acceleration and speed.<\/p>\n

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But this female kingfisher ten days ago was fishing from a perch that had twigs and branches completely and closely surrounding her. It was almost like she was enclosed in a cocoon of twigs with only a narrow opening in front of her for her body to pass through when she took off after a fish.<\/p>\n

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So when she did spot a fish and take off after it, she couldn’t fully open her wings for fear of hitting some of the twigs with her wings.<\/p>\n

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She essentially had to fall through the opening in the “cocoon” of twigs before she could fully open her wings, which prevented her from accelerating as quickly as she normally would.<\/p>\n

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It wasn’t until this third shot in her dive that she was able to open her wings and really begin to accelerate.<\/p>\n

So yes, she missed the fish. I don’t know if she missed it because her takeoff was slow, but it certainly didn’t help.<\/p>\n

I notice little behavioral details like this in my photos. Much ado about nothing I suppose but it wasn’t “nothing” for the kingfisher. Unless you’re talking about the fish she didn’t get.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

When you’re fishing to survive you do what you have to do. (6 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165894,"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":[7702,7701,2330,311],"class_list":["post-165890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belted-kingfishers","category-birds","tag-avoiding-obstacles-during-a-dive","tag-belted-kingfisher-diving-on-a-fish","tag-megaceryle-alcyon","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/belted-kingfisher-7005-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-H9E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165890","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=165890"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165924,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165890\/revisions\/165924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}