{"id":2929,"date":"2011-10-12T07:57:10","date_gmt":"2011-10-12T13:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=2929"},"modified":"2011-10-12T08:08:51","modified_gmt":"2011-10-12T14:08:51","slug":"angry-barn-swallow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/12\/angry-barn-swallow\/","title":{"rendered":"Angry Barn Swallow"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I approached the parking lot at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge just before taking the loop road there were myriads of swallows flying around as per usual in spring and early summer.\u00a0 I noticed this Barn Swallow on a post and decided to take a few shots.\u00a0 It let me approach very closely and I didn’t know why at first but it soon became very apparent that this bird was in distress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn-swallow-6799\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0If you look closely at the image\u00a0above you’ll notice that there is “something” connecting the tips of a tail feather and one of the primary wing feathers that prevented this bird from flying and as a result it was a very unhappy and frustrated bird!\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn-swallow-6801\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0I photographed this swallow for over 10 minutes as it struggled to solve its incomprehensible problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\"barn-swallow-6806\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It would alternately attempt to\u00a0break the connection by raising and extending its wings and…\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\"barn-swallow-6819\"<\/a><\/p>\n

trying to reach the problem area with its beak, which it just couldn’t quite\u00a0do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\"barn-swallow-6821\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At times its apparent anger and frustration (anthropomorphic of me, I know) became quite evident as it would momentarily cease struggling and just sit there and call out pitifully.\u00a0 But eventually the connection between the feathers broke and the bird flew off instantly – so fast that I missed the shot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I still don’t know for sure what substance caused this problem.\u00a0 It has been suggested by others that it could have been spider silk.\u00a0 I’ve also wondered about the possibility of sticky tree sap.\u00a0 If anyone reading this has any ideas I’d love to hear them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A word of explanation about the images.\u00a0 They were taken very early in my photographic learning curve and I was still shooting in jpeg rather than RAW so I had less flexibility in processing these shots.\u00a0 And I chose not to post my techs here because I really didn’t know what I was doing back then – no use embarrassing myself…<\/p>\n

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

As I approached the parking lot at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge just before taking the loop road there were myriads of swallows flying around as per usual in spring and early summer.\u00a0 I noticed this Barn Swallow on a post and decided to take a few shots.\u00a0 It let me approach very closely and I didn’t know why at first but it soon became very apparent that this bird was in distress.\u00a0   \u00a0If you look closely at the image\u00a0above you’ll notice that there is “something” connecting the tips of a tail feather and one of the primary wing feathers that prevented this bird from flying and as a result it was a very unhappy and frustrated bird!\u00a0     \u00a0I photographed this swallow for over 10 minutes as it struggled to solve its incomprehensible problem.\u00a0   \u00a0 It would alternately attempt to\u00a0break the connection by raising and extending its wings and…\u00a0   \u00a0 trying to reach the problem area with its beak, which it just couldn’t quite\u00a0do.\u00a0   \u00a0 At times its apparent anger and frustration (anthropomorphic of me, I know) became quite evident as it would momentarily cease struggling and just sit there and call out pitifully.\u00a0 But eventually the connection between the feathers broke and the bird flew off instantly – so fast that I missed the shot.\u00a0 I still don’t know for sure what substance caused this problem.\u00a0 It has been suggested by others that it could have been spider silk.\u00a0 I’ve also wondered about the possibility of sticky tree…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5,334,395],"tags":[32,431,49,512,513,300,514],"class_list":["post-2929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-behaviors","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","tag-anthropomorphic","tag-barn-swallow","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-hirudo-rustica","tag-spider-silk","tag-swallow","tag-tree-sap"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Lf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2929","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=2929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}