{"id":169172,"date":"2025-07-18T05:54:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T11:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=169172"},"modified":"2025-07-18T06:13:54","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T12:13:54","slug":"a-reliable-and-tolerant-willet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/18\/a-reliable-and-tolerant-willet\/","title":{"rendered":"A Reliable And Tolerant Willet"},"content":{"rendered":"

During my camping trip to Montana last month I visited one spot on the shore of Lower Red Rock Lake multiple times each day because birds were always abundant there and some of them were unusually tolerant of my presence.<\/p>\n

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This Willet was the most reliable and tolerant of them all. In each of my 8-10 visits over three days, this guy was either there when I got there, or ‘he’ arrived soon after I did. At times he was so close I couldn’t fit him in the frame, so a couple of times I started my pickup and moved further away – which didn’t bother him in the least.<\/p>\n

He was so reliable in this spot, and tolerant of me, toward the end of my time in the valley I began calling him Steady Eddie.<\/p>\n

Here he had just landed on the shore. His crown feathers are partially erected in reaction to a Wilson’s Phalarope just out of frame to the right. That phalarope was almost as reliable and tolerant as Eddie. None of the other phalaropes were like that.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

In those three days this was the only time he came up on shore, although he was never far from it. Or from me.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

He had several preening sessions while I was with him but usually he had his back to me or his eyes were closed. This time his eye was open and I even got a catch light in his eye.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

I’ll close with a bathing shot, one of the few I got that I liked.<\/p>\n

I’ll admit to getting pretty attached to ol’ Eddie. At times I thought he might feel the same way about me.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Steady Eddie. (4 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169173,"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":[393,334,1493,343],"tags":[47,1752,7770,255,263,810,327],"class_list":["post-169172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bathing-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-willets","tag-bathing","tag-lower-red-rock-lake","tag-montanas-centennial-valley","tag-preening","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-tringa-semipalmata","tag-willet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/willet-6178-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-I0A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169172","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=169172"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169197,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169172\/revisions\/169197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}