![\"loggerhead](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/loggerhead-shrike-6864c-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI make every effort in the field to “read” the behavior of my avian subjects.\u00a0 Sometimes I’m right and sometimes I’m not but either way it’s a learning experience for me and my percentage of accuracy does seem to be improving.\u00a0 One of the payoffs can be better bird photographs for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n
This image is not one of those “better” photographs but I think it illustrates my point.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n
This gnarly and weathered\u00a0old sagebrush trunk is a habitual perch for meadowlarks, thrashers and to a somewhat\u00a0lesser degree, shrikes.\u00a0 All three species nearly always perch on the top of the vertical piece sticking almost straight up slightly to the left of center but as I passed this juvenile Loggerhead Shrike two days ago\u00a0(in my pickup) I noticed a couple of things – it didn’t flush as I drove by on the road and it was\u00a0hunkered down in a somewhat protected cranny of the wood, which I thought was slightly unusual.<\/p>\n
So I turned around and slowly approached the shrike, fully expecting it to fly off.\u00a0 But it didn’t and it let me get surprisingly close (this image is cropped very little) without even changing its position on the perch.\u00a0 I immediately wondered if it had a\u00a0food stash in the stump, shrikes being\u00a0well-known for impaling\u00a0food items like grasshoppers and even small rodents on barbed wire, thorns or other sharp projections.\u00a0 I looked through my lens for such a food item but couldn’t see any at the moment, probably because I was mostly concentrating on the process of photography.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t until I got home and looked at the\u00a0images on the screen that I noticed\u00a0the grasshopper below and slightly in front of the shrike.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"loggerhead](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/loggerhead-shrike-6864b-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
A huge crop of the same image reveals some clues as to what was going on.\u00a0 At first I thought the ‘hopper\u00a0was where it was on its own volition but closer inspection suggests not.\u00a0 Three of its legs are splayed out to the side, it seems to be “plastered” down on the twig\u00a0and in all of the images I took of the shrike the insects position did not change.\u00a0 Juvenile shrikes are notorious for having to learn the skills of stashing\/impaling their food, a process I’ve watched (and photographed<\/a>) multiple times and believe me it can be amusing because they’re so clumsy at it.\u00a0 They often repeatedly attempt to\u00a0position the prey on a poorly chosen projection and drop and retrieve it multiple times.<\/p>\n I believe that was what was happening with this grasshopper.\u00a0 I suspect the insect is dead and the shrike had been going through “the learning process” as I pulled up.\u00a0 I only had a few seconds with the bird before a Davis County school bus drove by and flushed the bird (typical bad timing for me…).<\/p>\n All this may\u00a0seem\u00a0like\u00a0much ado about nothing to\u00a0some but it’s the little things that can add up to\u00a0interesting photographs and if the school bus hadn’t come by I might have been able to get some interesting behavior shots.\u00a0 And if I hadn’t noticed its unusual position on the perch and its even more unusual “stickiness” as I passed by I’d\u00a0never have turned around for the bird in the first place.<\/p>\n Just sayin’…<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I make every effort in the field to “read” the behavior of my avian subjects. Sometimes I’m right and sometimes I’m not but either way it’s a learning experience for me and my percentage of accuracy does seem to be improving. One of the payoffs can be better bird photographs for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n