{"id":168313,"date":"2025-05-19T06:17:51","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T12:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=168313"},"modified":"2025-05-19T09:48:29","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T15:48:29","slug":"some-recent-birds-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/19\/some-recent-birds-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Recent Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally I post a collection of recent photos that don’t quite make the grade as standalone photos on Feathered Photography, but I still think they deserve to see the light of day. Collectively they’re a pretty good cross section of the types of birds I’ve been seeing lately.<\/p>\n

This time I’m including three photos taken in my back yard where, due to inclement weather and unusually cold temperatures, I’ve been spending more time than usual. Rather than going shooting.<\/p>\n

All photos were taken in northern Utah within the last ten days.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A far away Willet at sunrise. I like the setting and the color scheme.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A Swainson’s Hawk trying very hard to ignore a pesky mosquito.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A Common Raven making a last-second flight path adjustment in order to avoid the top of a sagebrush directly in front of the bird.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I posted other photos of this Short-eared Owl several days ago. Not sure how I missed this one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A Red-tailed Hawk performing a wing stretch. I spent a long time with this bird, waiting for it to take off, but just before it launched it turned around on the perch and took off mostly away from me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

At least the hawk turned its head slightly so we could see its face. It’s still a butt shot though.<\/p>\n

It’s been unseasonably cold and overcast lately so I’ve been seeing more birds in my back yard than I have in the field. Following are some of them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In past years I haven’t paid much attention to the Lesser Goldfinches visiting my thistle feeder but this year I’ve finally realized what I’ve been missing. These birds are highly social so when they visit my feeder they tend to come en masse. At times there are so many goldinches on this feeder I can barely see any of the seed tube.<\/p>\n

In the last few weeks I’ve spent many hours sitting at my patio table, watching goldfinches only a few feet away and listening to their soft calling. They have a calming effect on me, which is very much appreciated in these troubled times.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You may wonder why I’d include a shot like this, where we can barely see the bird. But in the 30+ years I’ve lived here I believe I’ve only seen a Yellow-headed Blackbird in my yard a single time, until three days ago when this male and one of his buddies showed up. Briefly.<\/p>\n

As soon as I spotted him he took off from my feeder and landed in my grapevine where he called (I refuse to call that noise “singing”) and displayed with enthusiasm. But apparently he was in “incognito mode”, so he stayed mostly hidden. I was still very happy to have him visit. And hope he will again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Yesterday it rained all day long. Last evening there was .7″ in my rain gauge, which isn’t bad for the high desert where I live. The forecast called for lows in the 30’s last night and tomorrow night so I went to the considerable trouble to cover all of my tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. I knew it probably<\/span><\/em> wouldn’t freeze but I wanted to avoid cold shock in my most tender plants.<\/p>\n

In case you’re wondering, the wire mesh bird guards are to prevent birds from eating my golden beet and nasturtium seedlings. Sparrows love to pull them up and gobble them down – the beets especially. Birds don’t bother them after they get a couple of inches tall.<\/em><\/p>\n

Immediately after I took this cell phone photo, a beautiful male Lazuli Bunting landed on one of my tomato cages (the one behind the third blue bucket from the right). Until last year, I’d never seen Lazuli Buntings in my yard.<\/p>\n

I’m hoping this guy, and potentially his mate, stick around for a while.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Nine photos of seven species.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168314,"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],"tags":[93,571,4697,451,279,646,327,7814,898],"class_list":["post-168313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","tag-common-raven","tag-lazuli-bunting","tag-lesser-goldfinch","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-swainsons-hawk","tag-willet","tag-yardbirds","tag-yellow-headed-blackbird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/common-raven-1647-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-HMJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168313","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=168313"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168351,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168313\/revisions\/168351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}