{"id":23485,"date":"2014-04-26T06:43:04","date_gmt":"2014-04-26T12:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=23485"},"modified":"2014-04-26T06:43:04","modified_gmt":"2014-04-26T12:43:04","slug":"landing-pelican","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/26\/landing-pelican\/","title":{"rendered":"Landing Pelican"},"content":{"rendered":"

American White Pelicans breed in colonies on remote islands and I have the privilege to photograph them as they forage for fish in bodies of fresh water near the Great Salt Lake.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

These\u00a0three images were taken five days ago at Bear River MBR, the same morning I photographed the pelicans\u00a0fighting over the headless carp<\/a>.\u00a0 It was soon after sunrise so the light was warm and with the sun at that low angle behind me it illuminated\u00a0the underside of the wings\u00a0nicely (though there is one relatively bright area in the whites of the\u00a0left wing).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The webbed feet of American White Pelicans function like skis when landing on water.\u00a0 I fired off a long burst as this bird came in and landed but because of a variety of factors these were the two best shots in the bunch.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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

1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

American White Pelicans are very large and heavy birds, typically weighing just over 16 lbs which is twice the weight of the Brown Pelican (interestingly Dr. William H. Behle, my ornithology professor at the University of Utah\u00a045 years ago\u00a0reported a male pelican in 1958\u00a0that weighed an incredible 29.9 lbs!).\u00a0 Notice how high this massive bird is sitting in\u00a0the water –\u00a0relatively little of its total volume is below the water line.\u00a0 These birds manage that bit of trickery with a\u00a0large system of subcutaneous air sacs near the breast that increases their buoyancy significantly.<\/p>\n

Pretty neat!<\/p>\n

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

The webbed feet of American White Pelicans function like skis when landing on water.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23486,"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":[338,334,424],"tags":[1984,420,1385,160,423],"class_list":["post-23485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-pelicans","tag-air-sacs","tag-american-white-pelican","tag-dr-william-h-behle","tag-great-salt-lake","tag-pelecanus-erythrorhyncos"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/american-white-pelican-5228-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-66N","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23485","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=23485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}