{"id":17778,"date":"2013-08-25T05:01:49","date_gmt":"2013-08-25T11:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=17778"},"modified":"2013-08-25T07:55:06","modified_gmt":"2013-08-25T13:55:06","slug":"mountain-plovers-prairie-ghosts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/25\/mountain-plovers-prairie-ghosts\/","title":{"rendered":"Mountain Plovers – “Prairie Ghosts”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Early last April\u00a0we\u00a0discovered a pair of Mountain Plovers on Antelope Island.\u00a0 This was only the 10th confirmed sighting of the species in Utah so it created quite the stir when we reported it to\u00a0UBIRD (I was driving, Mia reported it on her phone).\u00a0 They\u00a0only\u00a0stayed on the island for a couple of days before they continued their migration to their breeding\u00a0 grounds but it was fun while it lasted and\u00a0spending time with this adorable pair was an experience I’ll long remember.<\/p>\n

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\u00a01\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

References say that Mountain Plover sexes are “alike” but these two weren’t.\u00a0 I’d guess they were male and female but if they were I don’t know which was which.\u00a0 Their distinctive black loral stripe extending from\u00a0black bill to black eye can make it appear that all three are one structure. \u00a0\u00a0This\u00a0plover was slightly darker and more rufous…<\/p>\n

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than the other of the pair.<\/p>\n

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\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Both were good hunters.\u00a0 Grasshoppers are their favorite food item when they’re available but they’re opportunistic feeders and it was too early for grasshoppers so they were mostly eating larval insects of a variety of species.\u00a0\u00a0 This is the lighter colored bird with a snack.<\/p>\n

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\u00a01\/3200, f\/8, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But the darker plover also found plenty to eat.<\/p>\n

This species is notoriously “tame”.\u00a0 When approached or threatened, they typically sit down and remain motionless rather than fly off.\u00a0 They’re often called “prairie ghosts” because they seem to disappear in the dried grasses when they squat to hide.\u00a0\u00a0 I saw this happen many times when a raven or harrier flew overhead but they were absolutely comfortable in our presence and went about their normal activities.\u00a0 We spent an extended time period with them with no one else around and it was divine.<\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I wanted to include an intimate shot to try to show just how accepting these plovers were of us.\u00a0 This is what I would see through my viewfinder – a lovely bird with soft, subtle colors looking benignly back at me, seemingly with endless trust.<\/p>\n

It was an experience I’ll likely never have again but I must admit that I’m starting to look for them on the island again.<\/p>\n

After all, they’re early migrators…<\/p>\n

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

Early last April we discovered a pair of Mountain Plovers on Antelope Island. This was only the 10th confirmed sighting of the species in Utah so it created quite the stir when we reported it to UBIRD <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17780,"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":[334,1376],"tags":[31,1378,136,866,1377,1622,1006,311],"class_list":["post-17778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-mountain-plovers","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-charadrius-montanus","tag-feeding","tag-migration","tag-mountain-plover","tag-prairie-ghost","tag-ubird","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/mountain-plover-4549-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4CK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17778","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=17778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}