{"id":29094,"date":"2015-01-24T07:28:25","date_gmt":"2015-01-24T14:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=29094"},"modified":"2015-01-24T10:19:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-24T17:19:10","slug":"chronicling-a-recent-morning-on-antelope-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/24\/chronicling-a-recent-morning-on-antelope-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Chronicling A Recent Morning On Antelope Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four days ago I had\u00a0a particularly\u00a0interesting morning on Antelope Island and thought readers might\u00a0enjoy a chronological reporting of my experience. Some of these images are better than others but\u00a0as a group these photos of varying quality\u00a0document my\u00a02 1\/2 hour morning\u00a0on that wonderful island.<\/p>\n

Normally I’d include image techs below each photo but this morning I simply ran out of time. Most of these shots were taken with my Canon 7D Mark II with attached 100-400mm lens and\u00a01.4 teleconverter (yes, my 500mm lens is still in the shop…).<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"bison<\/p>\n

8:30 AM<\/strong>:\u00a0 The first critter I encountered was this bull Bison just as the sun was coming up over the Wasatch Mtns.\u00a0Just prior to this image he\u00a0spent quite some time scratching his chin and face on the rock behind him.\u00a0I like this shot because it shows that interesting bicolored tongue and there’s enough\u00a0depth of field to allow the viewer to appreciate the setting with a small arm of\u00a0the Great Salt Lake in the background.<\/p>\n

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\"horned<\/p>\n

8:40 AM<\/strong>:\u00a0 It was a beautiful spring-like morning and many critters were acting like it truly was spring. I liked the singing pose with erect horns from this male Horned Lark.<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

9:04<\/strong> AM: \u00a0But this was a morning dominated by coyotes. I saw (and attempted to photograph) interesting behaviors from 8 of them from relatively close quarters. This was one of a pair that\u00a0had been\u00a0fighting viciously when we first spotted them but by the time I got my pickup turned around they had become separated by some distance.\u00a0This one is running toward an elevated spot near the other coyote…<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

9:06<\/strong> AM: where it laid down and aggressively stared down\u00a0the other coyote…<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

9:10<\/strong> AM:\u00a0 who assumed a very submissive posture and made a point of not looking back at the more dominant animal.<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

9:12<\/strong> AM:\u00a0 Eventually that more dominant coyote very slowly wandered off to the right while the other one maintained its submissive pose and avoided eye contact with the other canid so I soon left the area.<\/p>\n

Next we encountered a friend who works for the state parks who told us of something interesting that was occurring toward the south end of the island that morning so we headed toward Garr Ranch.<\/p>\n

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\"mule<\/p>\n

9:42<\/strong> AM:\u00a0 Utah DWR\u00a0along with state park personnel and volunteers were in the midst of a Mule Deer transplant operation. They used a helicopter to drop nets on the animals and then return them to a staging area near the ranch where they were examined for health issues and then loaded onto\u00a0horse trailers for eventual removal to the San Juan River drainage (and perhaps other places)\u00a0in south-east Utah.\u00a0I believe that they were only\u00a0capturing does – no bucks were taken.<\/p>\n

Here the helicopter is\u00a0delivering three deer to the staging area.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"mule<\/p>\n

9:43<\/strong> AM:\u00a0\u00a0In this shot the deer are about to be lowered to a spot behind the vehicles where they are met by folks who will carry the animals on a wooden platform to the examination area.\u00a0This process is always interesting\u00a0– last year we happened\u00a0to be very near an area where they were dropping nets on the deer.\u00a0It was fascinating,\u00a0exciting\u00a0(and loud)\u00a0to watch.<\/p>\n

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\"peregrine<\/p>\n

10:11<\/strong> AM:\u00a0 Soon we were back on the causeway and on our way home when\u00a0we spotted this Peregrine Falcon out on “the jetty” but it was much too far away for decent photographs, especially with the 100-400mm lens I was limited to.<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

10:17<\/strong> AM:\u00a0 Next we encountered three more coyotes hunting the causeway as they worked their way east. When this one came to a frozen patch of water it was very tentative about crossing the ice because at the edge the ice was quite thin and every time it gingerly put its left foot down the ice cracked audibly (I could clearly hear the sound from my pickup). It was amusing to watch but after a few steps forward the ice became thicker and stopped making cracking sounds so the coyote did make it across.<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

10:24<\/strong> AM:\u00a0 Two of the three coyotes were hunting voles together while the third maintained its distance from the pair and stayed out on the mudflats.\u00a0Here the coyote on the right had been digging for a vole when the other animal came in too close and there was a bit of a\u00a0dust-up.\u00a0The animal on the left was actually bitten\u00a0during the brief quarrel but eventually all was apparently forgiven and\u00a0they continued to move east together as they hunted for voles.<\/p>\n

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\"coyote<\/p>\n

10:27<\/strong> AM:\u00a0 This shot gives you a feeling for what was happening.\u00a0The two coyotes at bottom hunted mostly together as they moved along the causeway but the one on the mudflats behind never dared to come in close, though it continued to maintain the pace and direction of the hunting pair. You can see the Wasatch Mountains in the background.<\/p>\n

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\"rough-legged<\/p>\n

10:34 AM<\/strong>:\u00a0 A few minutes later we found a beautiful Rough-legged\u00a0Hawk\u00a0mostly buried in the brush on a very low perch but when it took off it only\u00a0gave me a few butt shots.<\/p>\n

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\"northern<\/p>\n

10:36 AM<\/strong>:\u00a0 But this Northern Harrier made up for it.\u00a0It was hunting into a quartering north wind so in order to follow the edge of the causeway it was always turned slightly away from me as I drove but here it gave me a look back that compensated for that.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0never know\u00a0what\u00a0I’ll encounter on the island.\u00a0Sometimes\u00a0I return home “skunked”, sometimes I see interesting things but can’t get decent photographs of them and\u00a0occasionally I get images that delight me. This morning four days ago was a mix of the latter two.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Four days ago I had a particularly interesting morning on Antelope Island and thought readers might enjoy a chronological reporting of my experience. Some of these images are better than others but as a group these photos of varying quality document my 2 1\/2 hour morning on that wonderful island.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29106,"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":[3,334,347,374,394,354,1410,341,582,358],"tags":[31,56,98,2380,160,174,1359,2381,234,269,904],"class_list":["post-29094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-bison-mammals","category-coyotes","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-horned-larks","category-mule-deer-mammals","category-northern-harriers","category-peregrine-falcons","category-rough-legged-hawks","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-bison","tag-coyote","tag-coyotes-fighting","tag-great-salt-lake","tag-horned-lark","tag-mule-deer","tag-mule-deer-transplant","tag-northern-harrier","tag-rough-legged-hawk","tag-utah-division-of-wildlife-resources"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/northern-harrier-7521-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7zg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29094","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=29094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}