{"id":16610,"date":"2013-07-01T05:41:28","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T11:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=16610"},"modified":"2013-07-01T05:41:28","modified_gmt":"2013-07-01T11:41:28","slug":"long-billed-curlew-and-fledgling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/01\/long-billed-curlew-and-fledgling\/","title":{"rendered":"Long-billed Curlew And Fledgling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long-billed Curlews spend most of the late spring and early summer at mid-elevations on Antelope Island while nesting and raising their chicks but by this time of year they begin to bring the youngsters down to the shoreline.\u00a0 That’s where I photographed this lone adult with a single youngster yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

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\"long-billed<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This image well illustrates the reason I believe they come close to shore – brine flies.\u00a0 Billions of them!\u00a0 They’re a smorgasbord for many bird species this time of year and I suspect that includes curlews.\u00a0 Much of the time the adult stands guard over the\u00a0fledgling from an elevated perch (usually a rock) as the youngster forages in the dry vegetation.\u00a0 Brine flies are only found close to shore so that’s where the curlews are.\u00a0 You can see the Great Salt Lake in the background of this image.<\/p>\n

Here the adult is hopping up to the rock in order to keep a close eye on the fledgling.<\/p>\n

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\"long-billed<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The activity of the bird stirs up even more flies that were sunning themselves on the rock.<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The adult would maintain vigilance on a rock for some time before flying to another one as the youngster moved around to different areas.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"long-billed<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This is the fledgling in very warm, early morning light.\u00a0 Talk about cryptic coloration!<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"long-billed<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

At this stage of development the young bird has its complete juvenile plumage except that the tail and wing flight feathers aren’t yet fully grown and it retains some of the luxurious down of the chick on the back half its neck and under the chin.<\/p>\n

And that can make them look a little silly…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Long-billed Curlews spend most of the late spring and early summer at mid-elevations on Antelope Island while nesting and raising their chicks but by this time of year they begin to bring the youngsters down to the shoreline. That’s where I photographed this lone adult with a single youngster yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16614,"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":[3,334,369],"tags":[31,729,481,1344,145,160,208,230,427],"class_list":["post-16610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-long-billed-curlews","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-brine-flies","tag-chick","tag-cryptic-coloration","tag-fledgling","tag-great-salt-lake","tag-long-billed-curlew","tag-nesting","tag-numenius-americanus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/long-billed-curlew-9779-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4jU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16610","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=16610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}