{"id":25219,"date":"2014-07-20T05:24:25","date_gmt":"2014-07-20T11:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=25219"},"modified":"2014-07-20T06:51:47","modified_gmt":"2014-07-20T12:51:47","slug":"sapsuckers-cleaning-out-the-nest-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/20\/sapsuckers-cleaning-out-the-nest-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"Sapsuckers Cleaning Out The Nest Hole"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 5″ x 8″ (interior dimensions)\u00a0tree nest hole of the Williamson’s Sapsucker\u00a0with as many as 6 growing nestlings inside presents a significant potential hygiene problem.\u00a0 This post is about how the adults dealt with that situation as I was photographing them about three weeks ago\u00a0near the Montana\/Idaho border.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/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

A layer of wood chips at the bottom of the nest chamber serves as a bed for the eggs.\u00a0 When they hatch excreta from the chicks soaks the chips and they must be removed regularly.\u00a0 I often heard the adults inside the nest as they excavated more wood\u00a0shavings that improve sanitation by soaking up more\u00a0fecal material.\u00a0\u00a0 As the chicks become older they produce gelatinous fecal sacs which also must be removed.<\/p>\n

Here the male is about to leave the nest with a fecal sac.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"williamson's<\/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

\u00a0The female also contributes to the sanitation regimen.\u00a0 In this image she is removing soaked wood chips.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Often the adults had both fecal sacs and wood chips in their bills as they left the nest after delivering ants to the chicks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/25000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 370mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Here the male is doing the same thing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, 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

\u00a0When only wood chips were involved (no fecal sac) the male in particular would often simply stick his head outside the hole and shake vigorously which sent the chips flying to the ground beneath the nest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/5000, 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

\u00a0At times they were so thick that they obscured both him and the hole but he could be seen more clearly…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/5000, 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

\u00a0as the chips fell away.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D, Canon 100 – 400 @ 235mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A shot taken with my smaller lens as the male\u00a0left the nest hole with a load of wood chips provides a better look at the overall setting.<\/p>\n

The mix of dark trees and bright blue sky in the background combined with constantly changing light on the nest-tree was a real exposure challenge for this photographer but it was great fun spending time with these birds and the\u00a0difficult conditions\u00a0made for an excellent (though frustrating)\u00a0photographic learning experience.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

The 5″ x 8″ (interior dimensions) tree nest hole of the Williamson’s Sapsucker with as many as 6 growing nestlings inside presents a significant potential hygiene problem. This post is about how the adults dealt with that situation as I was photographing them about three weeks near the Montana\/Idaho border.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25222,"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":[2108,398,2109,2107,2040,2106,2039,2038,2110],"class_list":["post-25219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-williamsons-sapsuckers","tag-cleaning-nest","tag-exposure","tag-fecal-sac","tag-hygiene","tag-nest-hole","tag-sanitation","tag-sphyrapicus-thyroideus","tag-williamsons-sapsucker","tag-wood-chips"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/williamsons-sapsucker-0378-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6yL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25219","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=25219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}