{"id":18570,"date":"2013-09-20T04:00:47","date_gmt":"2013-09-20T10:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=18570"},"modified":"2013-09-19T18:36:22","modified_gmt":"2013-09-20T00:36:22","slug":"a-serendipitous-buffalo-bird-and-a-bison-cow-and-calf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/20\/a-serendipitous-buffalo-bird-and-a-bison-cow-and-calf\/","title":{"rendered":"A Serendipitous &#8220;Buffalo Bird&#8221; And A Bison Cow And Calf"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many in the birding world don&#8217;t like Brown-headed Cowbirds much, for reasons that have been bandied about for years.\u00a0 But I have no problem with them, especially when one of them quite unexpectedly pops up into one of my images in a rather dramatic way.<\/p>\n<p>Cowbirds were long called &#8220;Buffalo Birds&#8221; for their habit of following the huge, nomadic bison herds across western North America as they fed on the insects stirred up by the moving herds.\u00a0 As a western history buff I probably romanticize such\u00a0scenes in my mind and enjoy it\u00a0more than most when I actually witness anything\u00a0similar.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bison-4784-ron-dudley.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"18571\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/20\/a-serendipitous-buffalo-bird-and-a-bison-cow-and-calf\/bison-4784-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bison-4784-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"900,751\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;8&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;RON DUDLEY&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;Canon EOS 7D&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1369124797&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;400&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;500&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.0005&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"bison 4784 ron dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bison-4784-ron-dudley-300x250.jpg\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bison-4784-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-18571\" alt=\"bison 4784 ron dudley\" src=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bison-4784-ron-dudley.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"751\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bison-4784-ron-dudley.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bison-4784-ron-dudley-300x250.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bison-4784-ron-dudley-150x125.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bison-4784-ron-dudley-400x333.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong>1\/2000, f\/8, ISO 500, 100-400 @ 400mm<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This past May I was photographing a herd of bison on Antelope Island when a cowbird that I didn&#8217;t even know was there flushed up in front of this\u00a0bison\u00a0cow and calf as they ambled along.\u00a0 It&#8217;s an image I like for a variety of reasons but largely because I think the bird adds interest and historical perspective.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <em>Serendipity: &#8211; a happy accident,\u00a0 pleasant surprise, or fortunate mistake. Specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful while not\u00a0searching for it<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Some of the reasons I think the image is serendipitous:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">I didn&#8217;t expect the bird and I think it added to the image<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>the cowbird is in silhouette from the shadow of the cow\u00a0&#8211; which I believe works best in this case (and I&#8217;m generally not\u00a0a fan of silhouettes)<\/li>\n<li>the bird is in an<em> almost<\/em> perfect position between the head of the cow and the out of focus foreground plants<\/li>\n<li>the wing position of the bird couldn&#8217;t be better, especially in silhouette<\/li>\n<li>exposure, light and position of the bison are all good<\/li>\n<li>all three subjects are sharp<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Yes, I wish the\u00a0out of focus vegetation in the foreground\u00a0at lower left wasn&#8217;t there.\u00a0 But it was and I can live with it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I&#8217;m probably\u00a0over-analyzing\u00a0here and it may be that this image appeals only to me.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">But it does, so I thought I&#8217;d post it&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many in the birding world don&#8217;t like Brown-headed Cowbirds much, for reasons that have been bandied about for years.  But I have no problem with them, especially when one of them quite unexpectedly pops up into one of my images in a rather dramatic way.<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/20\/a-serendipitous-buffalo-bird-and-a-bison-cow-and-calf\/\"><span>Continue reading<\/span><i class=\"crycon-right-dir\"><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18571,"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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,334,347],"tags":[56,780,792,1661],"class_list":["post-18570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-bison-mammals","tag-bison","tag-brown-headed-cowbird","tag-serendipity","tag-silhouette"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bison-4784-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4Pw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}