{"id":29505,"date":"2015-02-12T05:48:41","date_gmt":"2015-02-12T12:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=29505"},"modified":"2015-02-12T06:49:57","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T13:49:57","slug":"gyrfalcon-along-the-antelope-island-causeway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/12\/gyrfalcon-along-the-antelope-island-causeway\/","title":{"rendered":"Gyrfalcon Along The Antelope Island Causeway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was a day I won’t soon forget as I saw and photographed a Gyrfalcon here in Utah. The Utah Bird Records Committee has accepted only six previous records of Gyrfalcons in Utah and the most recent one was in 2001.<\/p>\n

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\"gyrfalcon<\/p>\n

Most of the time the falcon was far away (it only took up about 2\/3 of the central focusing point on my lens while it was perched on the mud) and it was usually side\/back lit so I was happy just to get some shots of it that were good enough for ID.\u00a0Friend and\u00a0respected raptor authority Jerry Liguori identified the bird as a juvenile gray morph Gyrfalcon (it appears brown instead of gray because it’s a juvenile).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"gyrfalcon<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Gyr spent most of its time far out on the mud flats along the south side of the\u00a0Antelope Island causeway so the nearest shots I got of the bird\u00a0was when it was heading for its far-away perch on the mud (this image) or after it took off in the direction of Fremont Island (previous image).<\/p>\n

I actually laid awake last night thinking of what could have been.\u00a0When I first spotted the bird it was hunting along the causeway as I was driving.\u00a0 It had apparently come up behind me and to the side and was only about 150-200′ above and slightly to the side of my pickup (I could see it through the top right corner of my windshield). At first I wasn’t sure what large falcon species I was seeing but when Mia was eventually able to see it she was\u00a0quite confident that it was a Gyrfalcon (her ID skills are better than mine).\u00a0If I had simply stopped and hopped out of my pickup with my camera and lens I may have been able to get a few frame-filling shots of the bird in flight. But I attempted to turn around for the bird and by then it\u00a0had high-tailed it.<\/p>\n

The only other Gyrfalcon<\/a> I’ve ever seen or photographed was a falconry escapee. This bird had no jesses and I couldn’t see any bands in any of my images so I believe it to be a wild bird.<\/p>\n

I hope it hangs around the causeway for a while so\u00a0that many\u00a0folks can see it.\u00a0 I know that bird made my day and I suspect it would do the same for others.<\/p>\n

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

Yesterday was a day I won’t soon forget as I saw and photographed a Gyrfalcon here in Utah. The Utah Bird Records Committee has accepted only six previous records of Gyrfalcons in Utah and the most recent one was in 2001.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29508,"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":[3,334,1892],"tags":[31,539,2413,928,190,311,2414],"class_list":["post-29505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-gyrfalcons","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-causeway","tag-gray-morph","tag-gyrfalcon","tag-juvenile","tag-utah-2","tag-utah-bird-records-committee"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/gyrfalcon-2582-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7FT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29505","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=29505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}