{"id":23241,"date":"2014-04-15T04:43:50","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T10:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=23241"},"modified":"2014-04-15T05:16:18","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T11:16:18","slug":"a-mated-pair-of-loggerhead-shrikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/15\/a-mated-pair-of-loggerhead-shrikes\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mated Pair Of Loggerhead Shrikes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have very few images of mated pairs of songbirds that I like. This\u00a0second shot\u00a0from yesterday is one of them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I photographed this Loggerhead Shrike yesterday morning on Antelope Island.\u00a0 With the strong sidelight I didn’t have a lot of enthusiasm for images of the bird while it was perched so I was set up for take-off shots (fast shutter speed, high ISO).\u00a0 For me the strongest asset of this image is the good look at the strongly hooked bill of this wanna-be raptor.<\/p>\n

But then something totally unexpected and fortuitous\u00a0occurred.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another shrike flew in and landed right next to the bird I was photographing!\u00a0 I fired off a\u00a0few\u00a0quick shots and then\u00a0adjusted my aperture for more depth of field but by then the bird on the left had turned its head to the left\u00a0so those shots have no eye contact.\u00a0 Of the\u00a0first images I took only this one had good sharpness on both birds.<\/p>\n

Based on their behavior this time of year\u00a0I’m almost positive they were a mated pair and\u00a0I suspect the bird on the left to be the male.\u00a0 I like the contrasting poses, the way both birds are looking at each other, the\u00a0natural perch and the catch lights in both visible eyes.\u00a0 And I think the sidelight worked pretty well, particularly on the bird on the left.<\/p>\n

Once again, serendipity saved the day.<\/p>\n

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

I have very few images of mated pairs of songbirds that I like. This second shot from yesterday is one of them.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23243,"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":[3,334,346,391],"tags":[31,657,409,206,1539,792,1961],"class_list":["post-23241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-hooked-bill","tag-lanius-ludovicianus","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-mated-pair","tag-serendipity","tag-sidelight"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/loggerhead-shrike-3532-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-62R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23241","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=23241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}