{"id":170797,"date":"2026-02-10T06:36:42","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T13:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=170797"},"modified":"2026-02-10T09:44:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T16:44:03","slug":"some-recent-birds-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/10\/some-recent-birds-26\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Recent Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thirteen photos of nine species.<\/p>\n

Following is a collection of bird photos taken over the last several months. None of them will win any prizes but I think each one is interesting for one reason or another and collectively they provide a pretty accurate cross section of the species I’ve been seeing during this tragically warm and dry winter.<\/p>\n

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A Great Blue Heron fishing in front of a large rock along the shore at sunrise. It was cold, as evidenced by the heron’s frost-covered back but in early February it still hasn’t been cold enough for this small, shallow pond to freeze over a single time. And that’s highly unusual.<\/p>\n

For good reason I found this bird fishing in exactly this same spot at the same time of the morning for three days in a row. It was a highly productive…<\/p>\n

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fishing spot. Here’s the same heron, in exactly the same spot, just before sunrise two days earlier. This is one of nearly a dozen small fish I saw ‘him’ catch at his ‘glory hole’ over three consecutive mornings. Like human fisherpersons he quickly learned where the good fishing spots were.<\/p>\n

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The same heron on another morning. I’m including this photo as an example of rim lighting<\/a><\/span><\/span>. I seldom use rim lighting because I instinctively try to place the sun behind me when I’m in the field and I’m not a big fan of the technique with birds. But in certain situations, not necessarily this one, it can produce interesting results.<\/p>\n

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A Cooper’s Hawk performing a wing stretch on my back fence as ‘he’ awaits an opportunity to go after songbirds at my feeders.<\/p>\n

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My favorite Belted Kingfisher, an adult female.<\/p>\n

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A Pied-billed Grebe that was as surprised as I was that it found itself this close to me.<\/p>\n

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A drake Mallard coming in for a landing on the water. I like the effects of the air currents on his wing feathers.<\/p>\n

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A goofy-looking drake Ruddy Duck and his reflection. Red on red.<\/p>\n

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A drake Redhead at the beginning of a dive for food. In my photos of diving ducks their nictitating membrane is usually beginning to close just before their head goes underwater, as is the case here.<\/p>\n

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The next photo in the burst.<\/p>\n

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A female House Finch gorging on crabapples at a city park near my home. It’s been so warm this winter the crabapple leaves and fruit were still in pretty good shape.<\/p>\n

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A male House Finch doing the same thing.<\/p>\n

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I’ll close with a Northern Flicker looking down at a magpie that had just landed in the tree below him. Getting this shot required more of the “creative driving” that I’m known for. Long story.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Thirteen photos of nine species.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170080,"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":[2853,334,380,1094,5355,1172,1496,359,1243,6072],"tags":[6475,7918],"class_list":["post-170797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belted-kingfishers","category-birds","category-coopers-hawk-diurnal-raptors","category-great-blue-herons","category-house-finch","category-mallard-waterfowl","category-northern-flickers","category-pied-billed-grebes","category-redhead-waterfowl","category-ruddy-ducks","tag-rim-lighting","tag-utah-winter-birds"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/house-finch-8936-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-IqN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170797","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=170797"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170844,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170797\/revisions\/170844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}