{"id":24626,"date":"2014-06-19T05:02:16","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T11:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=24626"},"modified":"2014-06-19T05:51:40","modified_gmt":"2014-06-19T11:51:40","slug":"male-western-kingbird-greeting-his-lady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/19\/male-western-kingbird-greeting-his-lady\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Western Kingbird Greeting His Lady"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently I’ve made several posts of the female Western Kingbird as she constructed her nest.\u00a0 This morning I’d like to focus on her mate.<\/p>\n

Male Western Kingbirds take no part in nest construction or incubation.\u00a0 Nor\u00a0do they feed the female while she’s on the nest\u00a0(she leaves the nest to feed several times per\u00a0day).\u00a0 But he’s always there, seeming to offer encouragement and watch carefully\u00a0over the proceedings.\u00a0 His primary role during this process is to guard the nest against other birds, kingbirds in particular.<\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

He nearly always perched nearby as he waited for her to bring in nesting material and occasionally he was almost on top of the nest when she came in.\u00a0 Here he’s watching her\u00a0arrange nesting material in the nest just below him and to his left.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When he was this close and she flew into or out of the nest he would often seem to greet her or encourage her enthusiastically by raising his wings, fluttering them and chattering at her.\u00a0 The early morning light created a warm glow under his wings and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

At times it almost seemed as if he was waving at her with his wing as she passed by.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This photo was taken the following morning on the same perch as he performed the\u00a0greeting ritual as she flew by.\u00a0 I find it interesting that he grasped the same two twigs for support each time he landed here.\u00a0 I suspect he knew that one of them alone wouldn’t provide enough support.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/800, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

After an absence of six days due to poor weather and light we visited these kingbirds again yesterday morning.\u00a0 As I suspected would be the case the nest was finished and the female was incubating eggs.\u00a0 But sure enough the male was there standing guard over the nest and his mate during\u00a0a brief rain shower.\u00a0 He was further\u00a0away this time but I thought\u00a0the raindrops in the background\u00a0with good light on the bird made for an interesting image anyway.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Male Western Kingbirds take no part in nest construction or incubation. Nor do they feed the female while she’s on the nest (she leaves the nest to feed several times per day). But he’s always there, seeming to offer encouragement and watch carefully over the proceedings.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24629,"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":[3,334,391,675],"tags":[211,230,677,676],"class_list":["post-24626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-western-kingbirds","tag-male","tag-nesting","tag-tyrannus-verticalus","tag-western-kingbird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/western-kingbird-7962-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6pc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24626","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=24626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}