{"id":23503,"date":"2014-04-27T05:57:57","date_gmt":"2014-04-27T11:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=23503"},"modified":"2014-04-27T05:57:57","modified_gmt":"2014-04-27T11:57:57","slug":"a-clumsy-willet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/27\/a-clumsy-willet\/","title":{"rendered":"A Clumsy Willet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally a bird will have trouble\u00a0maintaining stability on its perch and the results can be entertaining.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1250, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Three days ago I photographed two Willets perched about 20′ apart on Greasewood bushes on Antelope Island.\u00a0 I suspect they were male and female (sexes are similar though the female is slightly larger) in the process of establishing pair bonds.\u00a0 I believe this one to be the male and I’ll refer to him as such.<\/p>\n

The female, out of frame to the left, barely moved in the roughly 25 minutes I spent with these birds but the poor male was having a devil of a time maintaining his stability on his perch.\u00a0 If he stayed absolutely still he was fine but he had an urge to preen that he couldn’t resist and\u00a0 when he tried to do so\u00a0the movement made him do…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/1250, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0multiple face-plants into the bush.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1250, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Here he’s trying to recover from one of them…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1250, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

He\u00a0spent a lot of time with his wings up as he tried to re-gain his balance…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

and he turned on the perch several times as he did so.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon 100 – 400\u00a0@ 100mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I quickly grabbed my other Camera to show the entire scene with both birds.\u00a0 The presumptive male is on the right.<\/p>\n

I’ll admit to enjoying the discomfort of this poor bird as it struggled to maintain its balance on the perch.\u00a0\u00a0But then I do remember my mother telling me when I was a kid that I had a warped sense of humor…<\/p>\n

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

Occasionally a bird will have trouble maintaining stability on its perch and the results can be entertaining.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23507,"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":[3,334,343],"tags":[31,137,574,211,810,327],"class_list":["post-23503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-willets","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-female","tag-greasewood","tag-male","tag-tringa-semipalmata","tag-willet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/willet-6669-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-675","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23503","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=23503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}