{"id":166095,"date":"2025-01-03T06:08:36","date_gmt":"2025-01-03T13:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=166095"},"modified":"2025-01-03T07:10:21","modified_gmt":"2025-01-03T14:10:21","slug":"ruddy-ducks-a-progress-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/03\/ruddy-ducks-a-progress-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruddy Ducks – A Progress Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last ten days or so I’ve been playing cat and mouse games with Ruddy Ducks at a pond I frequent. And losing.<\/p>\n

They’re the shyest ducks on the pond so they stay out in the middle where they’re much too far away for quality photos. I keep visiting the pond in hopes of catching one of them in a weak moment where it came in closer to the shore than usual, but they’ve been nothing if they haven’t been consistent in their shyness.<\/p>\n

Until late yesterday afternoon when three of the four of them, all females or juveniles (I have difficulty with that distinction), let their guard down momentarily and came in closer than usual. Not as close as I’d prefer, but closer.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

This one came in closer than any of the others but just for a few moments.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

At one point, three of them swam by in single file in front of me but in this shot I could only get two of them in frame. Here we can only see the wake of the lead Ruddy, which was out of frame to the left.<\/p>\n

These two Ruddys in the rear were gaining on the lead Ruddy so all I could do was hope they’d close the gap in time so I could get all three of them in frame before they disappeared behind vegetation in front of me.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

Eventually I succeeded. A small victory for the photographer but still a victory.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

There were actually four Ruddys on the pond, including this adult male, but he was shyer than the others so he never came in quite close enough to suit me. At least being as far away as he was gave me a low shooting angle. I adore the unique blue bill of the adult male in breeding plumage. Over time his bill will get even bluer.<\/p>\n

I intend to keep trying to get closer to these Ruddys but it’s probably a long shot, literally and figuratively. I’ve always found Ruddy Ducks to be amongst the shyest of all ducks.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Cat and mouse games with Ruddy Ducks. (4 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166096,"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":[334,6072],"tags":[7711,2405,2404,311],"class_list":["post-166095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ruddy-ducks","tag-blue-bill-of-adult-male","tag-oxyura-jamaicensis","tag-ruddy-duck","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/ruddy-duck-8448-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-HcX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166095","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=166095"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166121,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166095\/revisions\/166121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}