{"id":25035,"date":"2014-07-11T05:43:02","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T11:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=25035"},"modified":"2014-07-11T05:43:02","modified_gmt":"2014-07-11T11:43:02","slug":"williamsons-sapsuckers-the-mated-pair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/11\/williamsons-sapsuckers-the-mated-pair\/","title":{"rendered":"Williamson’s Sapsuckers – The Mated Pair"},"content":{"rendered":"

We were very\u00a0lucky to find the nesting pair of Williamson’s Sapsuckers in Clark County, Idaho early this summer.\u00a0 For starters, they’re “uncommon” and not often seen.\u00a0 Birders and researchers typically\u00a0locate most\u00a0birds by their calls but this sapsucker species is “generally quiet” and doesn’t spontaneously advertise their territories that time of year so passive listening\u00a0tends to be ineffective in\u00a0locating them.\u00a0 For this and other reasons Williamson’s Sapsuckers are poorly sampled and studied and there is little data\u00a0on their numbers.<\/p>\n

We first located the nest-hole in late May, thanks to the activity of\u00a0House Wrens who were nesting in an adjacent hole in the tree that had also (apparently) been excavated by\u00a0the sapsuckers.\u00a0 These photos were taken on our second trip to the area a month later\u00a0(June 29 – July 1).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"williamson's<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D, Canon EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 370mm, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

While photographing the sapsuckers one of my goals was to catch both the male and the female in the same image as often as I could in order to highlight the unusual and striking differences in their plumage.\u00a0 It wasn’t easy and I was only moderately successful.\u00a0 They were busy feeding young in the nest so when one bird was out foraging for ants the other was usually in the nest-hole with the chicks.\u00a0 Typically the bird in the nest would wait for its mate to return with food\u00a0and then they would exchange roles.\u00a0 It was during that exchange that I had\u00a0my only chances to get both birds in the same photo.<\/p>\n

Here the male has returned to the\u00a0tree with a beak-full of ants for the chicks and the female is leaving on another foraging trip.\u00a0 I do wish her shadow hadn’t fallen on his side but at least there’s light on his head and torso.\u00a0 We called\u00a0these kinds of images where the leaving birds wings haven’t yet opened “bullet shots”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"williamson's<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes the returning bird would wait below the hole for its mate to vacate the nest but other times that bird would wait at the hole entrance, which didn’t leave a lot of room at the hole\u00a0for the leaving bird to get out.\u00a0 Here the female has leaned far to her left to give her mate room to make his escape.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"williamson's<\/p>\n

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

In the end my favorite “two bird” shots of the sapsuckers didn’t include a full body view of both birds.\u00a0 Here the female is about to leave the hole and the male has brought in more ants.\u00a0 Note that he too is leaning to his left to give her room.\u00a0 The leaving birds exit is explosive and at times I thought it would take the other birds head off…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"williamson's<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And in this image their roles are reversed.\u00a0 I really enjoy the intimate look at both birds at the nest-hole in the final two images.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were very lucky to find the nesting pair of Williamson’s Sapsuckers in Clark County, Idaho early this summer. For starters, they’re “uncommon” and not often seen. Birders and researchers typically locate most birds by their calls but this sapsucker species is “generally quiet” and doesn’t spontaneously advertise their territories that time of year so passive listening tends to be ineffective in locating them. For this and other reasons Williamson’s Sapsuckers are poorly sampled and studied and there is little data on their numbers.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25043,"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":[334,391,2089],"tags":[2053,2032,988,2040,2039,2038],"class_list":["post-25035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-williamsons-sapsuckers","tag-clark-county","tag-idaho","tag-male-and-female","tag-nest-hole","tag-sphyrapicus-thyroideus","tag-williamsons-sapsucker"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/williamsons-sapsucker-1389b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6vN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25035","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=25035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}