{"id":24681,"date":"2014-06-23T04:46:38","date_gmt":"2014-06-23T10:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=24681"},"modified":"2014-06-23T04:46:38","modified_gmt":"2014-06-23T10:46:38","slug":"hovering-western-kingbird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/23\/hovering-western-kingbird\/","title":{"rendered":"Hovering Western Kingbird"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s virtually unheard of for me to catch a kingbird in full flight (as opposed to take-off or landing)\u00a0with any kind of image quality but two days ago I finally had some success in that arena.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, 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

This is the male Western Kingbird that I’ve been photographing lately while his mate has been constructing the nest.\u00a0 We spent only a few minutes with them because it was Saturday and the island was crazy-busy with\u00a0campers, bikers and many vehicles.\u00a0 The nest is close to a road and we didn’t want our presence to bring attention to the nest.\u00a0 The female is now incubating and the male left his nearby\u00a0perch and hovered\u00a0over her, perhaps\u00a015 feet above, for about 5 seconds.\u00a0 I quickly fired off a burst and these are some of those images. They aren’t great shots but I found the variety of wing positions and hovering postures to be interesting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, 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

The position of his feet are one clue that he was hovering – if he had been in full-on forward flight the feet and legs would have been tucked.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, 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

The role of the male\u00a0while his mate is on the nest is to watch for threats and chase off other birds\u00a0and I suspect he was checking things out in every direction before he flew off to another perch.\u00a0 It wasn’t unusual for him to fly over the nest but this was one of the few times I saw him hover there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, 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

\u00a0I don’t like this image much but the flight posture is especially\u00a0indicative of hovering.\u00a0 He seems to be looking down at his mate on the nest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, 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

\u00a0This is probably my favorite\u00a0shot from the burst.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1250, f\/6.3, 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

All the while his mate was below him\u00a0performing\u00a0her genetically prescribed\u00a0duty (as they both were).<\/p>\n

I still worry about these birds.\u00a0 They’re so very close to the road that\u00a0some folks are likely to eventually\u00a0notice the nest.\u00a0 Curiosity and ignorance of some humans\u00a0too often yields\u00a0unfortunate results for birds.\u00a0 I can only keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.<\/p>\n

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

It’s virtually unheard of for me to catch a kingbird in full flight (as opposed to take-off or landing) with any kind of image quality but two days ago I finally had some success in that arena.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24683,"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":[146,1347,2077,677],"class_list":["post-24681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-western-kingbirds","tag-flight","tag-hovering","tag-incubating","tag-tyrannus-verticalus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/western-kingbird-9010-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6q5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24681","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=24681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}