{"id":21669,"date":"2014-01-26T05:28:16","date_gmt":"2014-01-26T12:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=21669"},"modified":"2014-01-26T05:48:52","modified_gmt":"2014-01-26T12:48:52","slug":"frost-eating-white-crowned-sparrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/26\/frost-eating-white-crowned-sparrow\/","title":{"rendered":"Frost-eating White-crowned Sparrow"},"content":{"rendered":"

This adult White-crowned Sparrow was using the frost-covered twigs almost like its own private\u00a0store of unflavored popsicles.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"white-crowned<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I found this thirsty bird\u00a0six days ago in a bush on the periphery of Farmington Bay WMA.\u00a0\u00a0The temperatures were still below freezing\u00a0so the only water available was in the solid state –\u00a0morning hoarfrost still clinging to the twigs.\u00a0 Here the sparrow has just\u00a0eaten the frost from the twig next to its\u00a0right foot (you can see where it has been scraped away from the red bark) and it’s looking toward\u00a0the next part of the twig it will harvest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"white-crowned<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Those mandibles were efficient frost-scrapers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"white-crowned<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The action was\u00a0quick so I’m glad I had a relatively fast shutter speed.\u00a0 At times the frost was really flying through the air.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"white-crowned<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0It cleaned both sides of the twig…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"white-crowned<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0before inspecting the last little bit left up top…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"white-crowned<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

which didn’t last long either.\u00a0 Next the bird started eating the frost off the three twigs to the left but the vertical twig was in front of its head and neck so I didn’t include any of those shots.<\/p>\n

I see this frost-eating behavior most often in the mornings when the\u00a0rising sun hasn’t yet melted the frost and provides some warmth to make up for the heat loss caused by ingesting frost.\u00a0 Makes sense to me…<\/p>\n

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

This adult White-crowned Sparrow was using the frost-covered twigs almost like its own private store of unflavored popsicles.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21673,"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":[334,395,350],"tags":[24,1846,397,856,211,325,1663],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/white-crowned-sparrow-0083-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5Dv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21669"}],"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=21669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}