{"id":25121,"date":"2014-07-15T04:47:01","date_gmt":"2014-07-15T10:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=25121"},"modified":"2014-07-15T16:20:42","modified_gmt":"2014-07-15T22:20:42","slug":"the-sapsucker-and-the-ant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/15\/the-sapsucker-and-the-ant\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sapsucker And The Ant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes the presence of\u00a0a tiny, almost miniscule arthropod can make or break a bird photograph.<\/p>\n

I’ve taken shots where “bugs”, flying and otherwise,\u00a0were so distracting that I either had to clone them out (I really dislike cloning and seldom do it) or leave them in and live with the consequences.\u00a0 Typically I leave them\u00a0in since I tend to like the spontaneity and “naturalness” of their presence but there are times when\u00a0I think they detract from the image.<\/p>\n

But occasionally a single small insect can significantly enhance a photograph.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I photographed this female Williamson’s Sapsucker in Clark County, Idaho on my recent camping trip.\u00a0 She was delivering ants to her chicks in the nest-hole just above her but out of frame.\u00a0 Typically she and\u00a0her mate would land on the aspen\u00a0near this spot before flying up to the nest.<\/p>\n

I took several thousand images of the sapsuckers at the tree\u00a0and in many of them\u00a0they were carrying ants for their youngsters but in virtually all of those the ants were non-distinct\u00a0round globs in the bill, just as most of them appear here.\u00a0 But in this one image there’s a single ant hanging down from her bill from one leg and the “pose” of the ant against that background really makes it stand out.\u00a0\u00a0 Ants are an important part of this image but they’re so small that usually one cannot see them distinctly. This single ant solves\u00a0the problem and for that reason I kept coming back to the image and eventually decided to post it.<\/p>\n

If only the sapsucker hadn’t chosen this spot to perch, where the date someone carved on the aspen shows up so clearly…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Addendum:\u00a0 In a comment (below), Susan Stone mentioned an individual ant on the top of the bill just in front of the face of the sapsucker.\u00a0 For some reason I didn’t even notice that little feller so I got curious and cropped tightly to get a better look with more detail.\u00a0 It\u00a0appears to me that\u00a0the ant is crawling around free up there.\u00a0\u00a0That freedom didn’t last long though…\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Good eye, Susan!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Sometimes the presence of a tiny, almost miniscule arthropod can make or break a bird photograph.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25122,"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":[334,392,2089],"tags":[2041,865,2039,2038],"class_list":["post-25121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-williamsons-sapsuckers","tag-aspen","tag-cloning","tag-sphyrapicus-thyroideus","tag-williamsons-sapsucker"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/williamsons-sapsucker-0991-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6xb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25121","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=25121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}