{"id":24278,"date":"2014-06-06T05:06:33","date_gmt":"2014-06-06T11:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=24278"},"modified":"2014-06-06T05:06:33","modified_gmt":"2014-06-06T11:06:33","slug":"western-kingbird-with-a-serious-eye-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/06\/western-kingbird-with-a-serious-eye-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Kingbird With A Serious Eye Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whenever I get an up-close look at a bird in the wild through my lens\u00a0it’s always my subconscious expectation that it will be vigorous and healthy.\u00a0\u00a0It disturbs me when that doesn’t turn out to be the case.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0For the sake of comparison this is what a healthy Western Kingbird eye looks like, which is quite a contrast…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1000, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

to this\u00a0Western Kingbird that I encountered two days ago near Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.\u00a0 Notice that the unfeathered skin around the left\u00a0eye and at the base of the bill\u00a0appears to be covered with lesions and the overall appearance of the bird is an unhealthy one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1000, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0A close crop of the head reveals more detail.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The same symptoms present themselves on the right side of the face of the bird.\u00a0 This kingbird could fly but seemed somewhat\u00a0lethargic.<\/p>\n

I’m no vet or rehabber but this looks to me like it could be avian pox, a fairly common disease of birds caused by avipoxvirus.\u00a0 The disease typically causes wart-like growths (lesions) to appear on the unfeatherered parts of the bird.\u00a0 Avian pox is particularly common in finches and doves and I’ve seen and photographed it on some of those species several times in the past\u00a0but this is a first for me on a kingbird.<\/p>\n

These are not pretty pictures and\u00a0this not a happy story so I apologize for the Friday morning downer but I find all aspects of the lives of birds to be interesting, even when it’s unpleasant.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Whenever I get an up-close look at a bird in the wild through my lens it’s always my subconscious expectation that it will be vigorous and healthy. It disturbs me when that doesn’t turn out to be the case.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24282,"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":[338,334,675],"tags":[650,49,651,1215,677,676],"class_list":["post-24278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-western-kingbirds","tag-avian-pox","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-disease","tag-eye","tag-tyrannus-verticalus","tag-western-kingbird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/western-kingbird-8784-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6jA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24278","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=24278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}