{"id":17080,"date":"2013-07-20T03:31:10","date_gmt":"2013-07-20T09:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=17080"},"modified":"2013-07-20T03:31:10","modified_gmt":"2013-07-20T09:31:10","slug":"enveloped-by-shrikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/20\/enveloped-by-shrikes\/","title":{"rendered":"Enveloped By Shrikes!"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past several weeks we’ve been photographing a family of Loggerhead Shrikes on Antelope Island.\u00a0 I’ve photographed juvenile shrikes for years but I’ve never encountered any so fearless as these.<\/p>\n

They were banded as chicks by my friends at the Great Salt Lake Institute, associated with Westminster College.<\/p>\n

First, a disclaimer.\u00a0 All of these images were taken on the same\u00a0morning (July 16, 2013) and there was overcast to the east so the light was poor.\u00a0 In addition\u00a0many of the images were taken through\u00a0my dirty windshield so this post is about the experience<\/em>, not image quality.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

These young birds loved clamoring around on the hood of my pickup.\u00a0 They would look at their reflections, pick at smashed bugs and generally act like inquisitive kids.\u00a0 It wasn’t unusual to hear a bird clicking about on my roof at the same time one of its siblings was on my hood.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Occasionally there were two birds on the hood at the same time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

A familial squabble broke out right after this bird landed but I lost focus on the birds through the dirty windshield.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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

One of them spent quite a while on the passenger’s side mirror.\u00a0 Here it may be fussing with the band.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

This one landed on my mirror (driver’s side)\u00a0right in front of me (the mirror is pushed forward so it doesn’t interfere so much with my shooting).\u00a0 It was so close I could have reached\u00a0forward with my left hand and tickled it under the chin.<\/p>\n

These birds were landing all over my pickup – on the bed rails, tailgate, bumpers, tops of my tires – almost anyplace that wasn’t too slippery for them.\u00a0 I think they were mostly curious about my pickup, about Mia and I and about those clicking noises emanating from inside the truck.\u00a0 It would have been pretty comical if you could have seen me juggling three different cameras with different lenses attached (depending on how close they were to me) and squirming around in my seat trying to shoot\u00a0in front of me, behind me and to either side.\u00a0 The steering wheel had\u00a0me pinned down pretty well and then there’s that darned headrest behind me…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/500, f\/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Occasionally one would even land on a natural perch.\u00a0 This one looks like it’s glaring at me with evil intent but I’m almost convinced it was contemplating landing on my lens that was sticking out the window only a few feet away.\u00a0 Several times some of these birds attempted to do\u00a0just that\u00a0but changed their minds at the very last second when we reacted to them unexpectedly being so very close.<\/p>\n

I’ve never before experienced anything like this with wild birds.\u00a0 I know that some folks have been able to coax chickadees, jays\u00a0and hummingbirds to land on their hands.\u00a0 But these were shrikes! and their parents were almost as gutsy.<\/p>\n

An experience I won’t soon forget.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0 These birds were not baited.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These young birds loved clamoring around on the hood of my pickup. They would look at their reflections, pick at smashed bugs and just generally act like inquisitive kids. It wasn’t unusual to hear a bird clicking about on my roof at the same time one of its siblings was on my hood.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17081,"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":[3,5,334,346],"tags":[31,622,409,206,621],"class_list":["post-17080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-great-salt-lake-institute","tag-lanius-ludovicianus","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-westminster-college"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/loggerhead-shrike-1143-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4ru","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17080","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=17080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}