{"id":18424,"date":"2013-09-15T05:42:51","date_gmt":"2013-09-15T11:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=18424"},"modified":"2013-09-15T05:42:51","modified_gmt":"2013-09-15T11:42:51","slug":"plumage-development-stages-of-male-mountain-bluebirds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/15\/plumage-development-stages-of-male-mountain-bluebirds\/","title":{"rendered":"Plumage Development Stages Of Male Mountain Bluebirds"},"content":{"rendered":"

While photographing a juvenile male Mountain Bluebird in Montana last week I was struck by the interesting variation in\u00a0color and patterns\u00a0of the adult male in breeding plumage\u00a0as compared to those of the juvenile male.\u00a0 I thought some viewers might be interested in a photographic comparison of some of their development stages.<\/p>\n

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

This flashy adult male was photographed in early June this past summer.\u00a0 He’s sporting the overall sky-blue plumage that I find so appealing in the males\u00a0in particular.\u00a0 When you’re driving on a mountain road and a\u00a0flock of these birds flies in front of you, the flashing blues really catch your eye.<\/p>\n

I’m not really\u00a0sure what motivated this unusual pose.\u00a0 It was apparently some kind of display that lasted for perhaps 5 seconds so I got quite a few shots of it.\u00a0\u00a0At the time\u00a0I thought it looked like he was “dancing”.<\/p>\n

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

This bird is a juvenile (most likely a male but at this stage of development sexes are similar – image taken 7\/23\/13).\u00a0\u00a0 Note the general lack of blues except on the wings and tail.<\/p>\n

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

This juvenile male is molting into his adult colors (image taken 9\/10\/13).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At this stage they remind me of\u00a0some human teenagers – a little\u00a0gawky looking and unsure of their future course of development.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Many of the blues that are filling in\u00a0are quite splotchy among the juvenile browns…<\/p>\n

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

and only a few lighter spots on the breast remain.<\/p>\n

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

This view shows the black-tipped remiges (flight feathers) margined with grayish-white.<\/p>\n

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

This fluffed up, rousing pose reveals\u00a0some of the plumage colors that aren’t normally on the surface.\u00a0 Note that there are now\u00a0hints of blue on the belly and flanks.<\/p>\n

All this may be more than some wanted to know about\u00a0plumage stages of\u00a0Mountain Bluebirds but I find the contrasts between the awkward-looking juveniles and the sublime male adults to be quite interesting.<\/p>\n

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

While photographing a juvenile male Mountain Bluebird in Montana last week I was struck by the interesting variation in color and patterns of the adult male in breeding plumage as compared to those of the juvenile male. I thought some viewers might be interested in a photographic comparison of some of their development stages.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18427,"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":[334,394,1493,1608],"tags":[1579,741,1177,1657,994,1505],"class_list":["post-18424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-mourning-doves","tag-molting","tag-mountain-bluebird","tag-plumage-stages","tag-remiges","tag-rouse","tag-sialia-currocoides"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/mountain-bluebird-3624-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4Na","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18424","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=18424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}