{"id":24221,"date":"2014-06-03T04:43:08","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T10:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=24221"},"modified":"2014-06-03T09:56:57","modified_gmt":"2014-06-03T15:56:57","slug":"male-western-tanager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/03\/male-western-tanager\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Western Tanager"},"content":{"rendered":"

Without a doubt the most colorful bird I photographed on our camping trip last week was the male Western Tanager.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

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

This\u00a0species usually prefers the cover of shade so I was excited to catch him out in the open along a dirt road near the border of Montana and Idaho.\u00a0 I snapped off these first two shots from quite a distance because I feared he’d fly off as I approached in my pickup.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

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

I was pleased that he gave me a side view on that gnarly old perch but he was still too far away for good detail.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0He flew to a nearby perch and allowed me to get significantly closer.\u00a0 I feared that our presence might be making him nervous but I needn’t have worried because he\u00a0eye-balled the larger twig at left…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

and promptly hopped onto it and\u00a0plopped down for a brief rest, only occasionally looking back to check us out.\u00a0 Eventually he flew off after allowing me some reasonably close shots.\u00a0\u00a0In this image the\u00a0bird is slightly centered in\u00a0the frame but I wanted to “anchor” the branch that wraps over his back which required cropping this way.<\/p>\n

I’m always struck by the reds on the head of the male\u00a0Western Tanager which look to me like he’s dipped his\u00a0face into a bucket of red paint.\u00a0 The red comes from the plumage pigment rhodaxanthin which is a rare pigment in birds.\u00a0 The red pigments (4-oxo-carotenoids)\u00a0in other tanager species are produced metabolically from yellow pigments but these Western Tanager red pigments are obtained directly from their diet, presumably from insects.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Without a doubt the most colorful bird I photographed on my camping trip last week was the male Western Tanager.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24225,"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],"tags":[2032,211,220,2036,2035,2037,742],"class_list":["post-24221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","tag-idaho","tag-male","tag-montana-2","tag-piigment","tag-piranga-ludoviciana","tag-rhodaxanthin","tag-western-tanager"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/western-tanager-5827-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6iF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24221","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=24221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}