{"id":24128,"date":"2014-05-27T05:13:32","date_gmt":"2014-05-27T11:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=24128"},"modified":"2014-05-27T05:13:32","modified_gmt":"2014-05-27T11:13:32","slug":"loggerhead-shrikes-mate-feeding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/27\/loggerhead-shrikes-mate-feeding\/","title":{"rendered":"Loggerhead Shrikes “Mate Feeding”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five days ago I posted a series of images of a male Loggerhead Shrike feeding his mate (a ritual that is part of the pair bond between mated birds) and at the time I mentioned that I had photographed the same behavior the day before from the same birds.\u00a0 This is that first\u00a0sequence of images.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

On this morning the midges were thick on Antelope Island.\u00a0 They don’t bite but they can still be annoying to both photographers and birds and this female shrike had them flying all around her.\u00a0 She was unusually “sticky” on this perch and at first I didn’t know why but it soon became apparent that she was patiently waiting…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0to be fed by her mate.\u00a0 Here he has just flown in with what appears to be a large insect pupae and she shows obvious interest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0But then for a few moments she\u00a0appeared somewhat aloof about the idea of accepting the meal which seemed to confuse her mate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0But soon she hopped down off her lofty perch to a horizontal branch just below\u00a0and took the pupae when it was offered.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

She manipulated it with her beak for a few seconds and then flew off with it, possibly as food for her chicks, but in my first post of this behavior she ate the meal on the spot.<\/p>\n

It’s obvious that this is the same pair of birds as in my first post of the behavior (notice that the male has been banded) even though the sequences were photographed a day apart.\u00a0 You can see my previous post of mate-feeding here<\/a> if you’re interested.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0 This may be my last post for a week or so as I’m about to leave on an extended camping\/photo trip and most of the time I’ll be without computer access (though I will get emails and comments on my phone).\u00a0 In the past I’ve prepared posts before I left but this time it just didn’t work out that way – too many distractions came up and I simply ran out of time.\u00a0 The duration of the trip is undetermined – mostly dependent on weather and light.<\/em><\/p>\n

My apologies to those of you who depend on my posts as a condiment of sorts with your morning coffee…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five days ago I posted a series of images of a male Loggerhead Shrike feeding his mate (a ritual that is part of the pair bond between mated birds) and at the time I mentioned that I had photographed the same behavior the day before from the same birds. This is that sequence of images.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24132,"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":[3,334,392,346],"tags":[31,55,409,206,1571,1980,256,2029],"class_list":["post-24128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-birds-of-prey","tag-lanius-ludovicianus","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-mate-feeding","tag-midges","tag-prey","tag-pupae"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/loggerhead-shrike-2302-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6ha","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24128","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=24128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117093,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24128\/revisions\/117093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}