{"id":166327,"date":"2025-01-18T06:22:50","date_gmt":"2025-01-18T13:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=166327"},"modified":"2025-01-18T08:46:17","modified_gmt":"2025-01-18T15:46:17","slug":"antelope-island-and-causeway-yesterday-morning-a-sampler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/18\/antelope-island-and-causeway-yesterday-morning-a-sampler\/","title":{"rendered":"Antelope Island And Causeway Yesterday Morning – A Sampler"},"content":{"rendered":"

Birds, critters and regrettably, hunters.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning’s forecast called for sunny skies until a cold front moving in from the north was scheduled to sock us in with clouds at about 11 AM. So I decided to head for Antelope Island to look for birds (mostly) and take advantage of about three hours of forecast good light.<\/p>\n

But the light only lasted for about an hour before the clouds moved in early. Since the first six photos below are presented in the order they were taken, you’ll be able to tell when the light went sour on me just by looking at the photos. Not all of them are particularly good photos but collectively they’re a reasonably accurate representation of my morning on the island, and on the causeway.<\/p>\n

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A very cold, and thus puffed up, Western Meadowlark right after sunrise. This bird had no interest in taking off in the frigid air so it allowed me to get close.<\/p>\n

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The meadowlark barely moved in the several minutes I was with it and it sure as hell wasn’t going to sing in that cold air – especially this time of year. This yawn was the only pose variety it gave me.<\/p>\n

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This big ol’ bull bison was with a group of other bulls but he was the only one that raised his head from his grazing. He didn’t seem to be amused by the cold either, so he stuck his tongue out at the photographer.<\/p>\n

At this point the darn clouds moved in early so I tucked my tail and headed for home. But I did find some birds along the causeway.<\/p>\n

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An adult male Northern Harrier in a typical hunting flight pose, looking down. If I’d seen this bird coming toward me sooner, as I should have, I’d have been able to get some photos of him before he was slightly past me.<\/p>\n

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Another harrier in flight but by then the light was really poor.<\/p>\n

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A male American Kestrel with double bands, one of them color coordinated with his perch. Since this guy had a green band on his left leg, at first I thought he might be my old friend AOM,<\/a><\/span><\/span> but that turned out to not be the case. And no, I couldn’t read his band numbers\/letters in any of my photos.<\/p>\n

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OK, the following photos are out of order. They were actually among the first photos I took that morning, before sunrise along the causeway before I got to the island.<\/p>\n

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That early in the morning I had almost the entire 7-mile-long causeway to myself, with the exception of this faraway coyote that wasn’t happy to see my pickup show up and interrupt his hunting. So he broke out into a run and headed for the refuge of the island which was almost six miles away.<\/p>\n

Even with ‘him’ this far away I was still too close for comfort so he…<\/p>\n

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went further out and tried to run on the ice but that didn’t work because all four of his legs kept going out from under him on the slippery ice. I felt sorry for him so I left him behind and headed for the island.<\/p>\n

At that point, neither of us knew that there was something unpleasant waiting for him along the causeway up ahead.<\/p>\n

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A hunter and his decoys just east of the west bridge. And about a half dozen of this hunter’s buddies, all dressed in camo and armed to the teeth, were standing next to their pickups along the side of the causeway road.<\/p>\n

If the coyote stayed on this side of the causeway, the north side, he would have to thread the needle between the hunter and his buddies in order to get to the safety of the island. The state of Utah encourages the killing of coyotes – no restrictions and no license required. Coyotes are considered vermin and Utah pays a $50 bounty for each coyote killed.<\/p>\n

I didn’t have the heart to stay and watch what might happen, so I headed to the island. When I came back over an hour later, all the hunters and their pickups were still there and there was no sign of the coyote. I hope he made it safely to the island.<\/p>\n

Personally, I strongly<\/span> oppose hunting of any kind along the causeway. And for that matter, the island.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Birds, critters and regrettably, hunters. (9 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166336,"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":[340,3,334,374,8,341,370],"tags":[28,56,4711,7723,7724,323],"class_list":["post-166327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-coyotes","category-ecology-and-environment","category-northern-harriers","category-western-meadowlarks","tag-american-kestrel","tag-bison","tag-bounty-on-coyotes-in-utah","tag-hunting-along-antelope-island-causeway","tag-male-and-female-northern-harrier","tag-western-meadowlark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/western-meadowlark-1935-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-HgH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166327","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=166327"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166370,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166327\/revisions\/166370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}