{"id":24829,"date":"2014-07-02T04:30:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-02T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=24829"},"modified":"2014-06-28T06:34:13","modified_gmt":"2014-06-28T12:34:13","slug":"great-egret-trying-to-survive-a-harsh-winter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/02\/great-egret-trying-to-survive-a-harsh-winter\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Egret Trying To Survive A Harsh Winter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Great Egrets are unusual in my area but we occasionally get a few individuals in winter.\u00a0 Unfortunately this bird chose to hang around during one of our harshest winters in years (the same winter as my recent “A Tough Winter On Northern Harriers” post) and the heron struggled to survive.\u00a0 I don’t know if it succeeded.<\/p>\n

These images have an apparent blue cast but in these conditions (foggy, low light)\u00a0I believe that was what I saw so I didn’t mess with the white balance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

We had a brief thaw in late December that opened up some of the water at Farmington Bay\u00a0for fishing and this heron was trying to take advantage of the situation.\u00a0 It stood on the edge of the ice like a statue and waited for a chance at a fish.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1000, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0I only saw it make an attempt at a fish once and that attempt was unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1000, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The heron would stand at the same spot for a while and when it didn’t produce any fish it would hop\/fly a few feet down the edge of the ice and see if its luck improved at the new location.\u00a0 It repeated this maneuver about a dozen times but never even made another attempt at a fish.<\/p>\n

Life is tough for birds around here during harsh winters.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0 I’m on an extended camping\/photo trip to Montana and\u00a0internet access\u00a0is intermittent at best so I won’t be able to respond to\u00a0comments that may be posted\u00a0(though I do get the comment emails on my phone when I have a signal and I enjoy reading them).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

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

Great Egrets are unusual in my area but we occasionally get a few individuals in winter. Unfortunately this bird chose to hang around during one of our harshest winters in years and the heron struggled to survive. I don’t know if it succeeded.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24831,"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":[334,392],"tags":[2087,397,144,713,855],"class_list":["post-24829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-ardea-alba","tag-farmington-bay","tag-fishing","tag-great-egret","tag-winter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/great-egret-3486-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6st","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24829","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=24829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}