{"id":27608,"date":"2014-10-31T06:56:23","date_gmt":"2014-10-31T12:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=27608"},"modified":"2014-10-31T10:52:22","modified_gmt":"2014-10-31T16:52:22","slug":"downy-woodpecker-and-a-personal-horror-story-for-halloween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/31\/downy-woodpecker-and-a-personal-horror-story-for-halloween\/","title":{"rendered":"Downy Woodpecker (and a personal horror story for Halloween)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Downy Woodpecker is North America&#8217;s smallest woodpecker and even though they&#8217;re widespread and common on this continent\u00a0I&#8217;ve had very little luck catching them out in the open in a setting I like.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"27609\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/31\/downy-woodpecker-and-a-personal-horror-story-for-halloween\/downy-woodpecker-0736-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/downy-woodpecker-0736-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"722,900\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;5.6&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;RON DUDLEY&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;Canon EOS 7D&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1414658632&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;700&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;640&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.00125&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"downy woodpecker 0736 ron dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/downy-woodpecker-0736-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-27609\" src=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/downy-woodpecker-0736-ron-dudley.jpg\" alt=\"downy woodpecker 0736 ron dudley\" width=\"722\" height=\"900\" srcset=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/downy-woodpecker-0736-ron-dudley.jpg 722w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/downy-woodpecker-0736-ron-dudley-240x300.jpg 240w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/downy-woodpecker-0736-ron-dudley-120x150.jpg 120w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/downy-woodpecker-0736-ron-dudley-400x498.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 722px) 100vw, 722px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><em>\u00a01\/800, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This male was no exception.\u00a0 He gave me only a few furtive clear looks as he foraged for insects yesterday morning at Farmington Bay. He was mostly buried deep in the shade among the branches and leaves and only occasionally did a little dappled light land on him.<\/p>\n<p>I usually prefer my subjects to appear sharp and crisp in my images but Downy Woodpeckers\u00a0are known for the soft appearance of their plumage (thus their name) and that\u00a0certainly shows here.\u00a0 I particularly like the setting of this image\u00a0because for me it has an Oriental feel that I don&#8217;t often achieve.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>On another unrelated note, today is Halloween so in the spirit of the occasion I can&#8217;t resist relating a potential horror story that really spooked me last night.\u00a0 Today (or possibly tomorrow)\u00a0UPS is scheduled to deliver a new camera (Canon 7D Mark ll)\u00a0that I&#8217;m very excited about.\u00a0 But last night I made the mistake of watching a news story\u00a0(with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/surveillance-cam-catches-ups-driver-kicking-fragile-package\/\" target=\"_blank\">video clip<\/a>) on CBS regarding the recent\u00a0abuse a UPS driver heaped upon a $12,000 piece of\u00a0sensitive scientific equipment when he wasn&#8217;t allowed to\u00a0complete the delivery.\u00a0\u00a0 I could just imagine something similar\u00a0happening to my new camera.\u00a0 In this\u00a0case there was an obvious security camera in place &#8211; who knows what really goes on in the back of those trucks where there&#8217;s true anonymity&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>It didn&#8217;t help when my friend and incredibly talented nature photographer <a href=\"http:\/\/melissagroo.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Melissa\u00a0Groo <\/a>made the following comment regarding that news story when I posted it on Facebook.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>&#8220;Recently, when sending some equipment into Canon repair via UPS, I asked if we should mark the box fragile. The woman who works there said&#8211;she admitted to me&#8211;that she thinks that the drivers actually handle boxes marked fragile more roughly, just to be contrary. That was slightly terrifying.&#8221;\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Last night I literally had nightmares about my camera being\u00a0delivered in pieces.\u00a0 Hopefully my UPS driver won&#8217;t have a bad day today&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Ron<\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Downy Woodpecker is North America&#8217;s smallest woodpecker and even though they&#8217;re widespread and common on this continent I&#8217;ve had very little luck catching them out in the open.<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/31\/downy-woodpecker-and-a-personal-horror-story-for-halloween\/\"><span>Continue reading<\/span><i class=\"crycon-right-dir\"><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27609,"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":[334,1784],"tags":[2280,1785,1008,1717,211,2287,1786,2286],"class_list":["post-27608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-downy-woodpecker","tag-canon-7d-mark-ll","tag-downy-woodpecker-2","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-halloween","tag-male","tag-melissa-groo","tag-picoides-pubescens","tag-ups"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/downy-woodpecker-0736-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7bi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27608","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=27608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}