{"id":22349,"date":"2014-02-25T06:33:50","date_gmt":"2014-02-25T13:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=22349"},"modified":"2014-02-25T06:35:04","modified_gmt":"2014-02-25T13:35:04","slug":"preening-and-the-uropygial-preen-gland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/25\/preening-and-the-uropygial-preen-gland\/","title":{"rendered":"Preening And The Uropygial (preen) Gland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though I regularly watch birds as they preen it’s not often that I’m able to actually see the preen (uropygial) gland.<\/p>\n

In birds the preen gland is located at the base of the tail.\u00a0 Most birds have it though it’s absent in many of the ratites (flightless birds) such as the emu, cassowary, ostrich, bustard and a few others.\u00a0 The gland is most highly developed in aquatic species, especially pelicans, petrels, osprey and oilbird.<\/p>\n

The gland has pores similar to nipples that empty the oily secretions to the skin’s surface.\u00a0\u00a0Birds preen by rubbing their head and bill over the gland pores and then transferring that oil to their feathers, legs and feet.<\/p>\n

The oil apparently functions as a dressing\u00a0 that enhances feather integrity and may even help to preserve the horny structure of the bill and\u00a0scales of the feet and legs.\u00a0 There is some evidence to indicate that the gland secretion contains a substance that is a precursor to\u00a0vitamin D, which is then converted to vitamin D by sunlight and absorbed through the skin.\u00a0 Many researchers believe that the\u00a0gland functions differently in various bird species.<\/p>\n

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When birds preen they’re vulnerable because they can’t watch effectively for approaching predators with their head often buried in their feathers so they usually have to feel safe and relaxed before they do it.\u00a0 I was photographing this Black-crowned Night Heron out in the open\u00a0at the Great Salt Lake Nature Center near Farmington Bay\u00a0when…<\/p>\n

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it began to walk over to the base of a vertical stand of the previous year’s phragmites.<\/p>\n

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Here it felt relatively safe from attack and began to preen.\u00a0 To expose the preen gland they lift the feathers covering it vertically.\u00a0 Here you can see the exposed gland at the base of the tail.<\/p>\n

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Sometimes it rubbed the length of its long bill over the gland which smears the oil over the mandibles.<\/p>\n

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It would even squeeze the gland with its bill tip to obtain the oil.<\/p>\n

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In this tight crop of the previous image you can see part of the gland\u00a0near the tip of the lower mandible.<\/p>\n

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Here the heron is applying some of that oil to the feather tips on its\u00a0left wing.<\/p>\n

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In this shot the bird is applying oil to the feathers near the shoulder.\u00a0 Of course it can’t use its bill to apply oil to its head feathers so to accomplish that it would rub its head over plumage that had already been oiled.<\/p>\n

If you have the interest here’s a video clip <\/a>of a Great Hornbill obtaining oil from its preen gland and then applying it to its feathers.<\/p>\n

Birds are fastidious about preening and keeping their feathers in good shape.\u00a0 Their very lives depend on it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Though I regularly watch birds as they preen it’s not often that I’m able to actually see the preen (uropygial) gland.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22361,"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":[334,1126,395],"tags":[716,397,1891,161,1127,1887,255,1889,1888,1890],"class_list":["post-22349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-black-crowned-night-herons","category-miscellaneous","tag-black-crowned-night-heron","tag-farmington-bay","tag-great-hornbill","tag-great-salt-lake-nature-center","tag-nycticorax-nycticorax","tag-preen-gland","tag-preening","tag-ratite","tag-uropygial-gland","tag-vitamin-d"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/black-crowned-night-heron-0480b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5Ot","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22349","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=22349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}