{"id":30887,"date":"2015-04-21T05:11:45","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T11:11:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=30887"},"modified":"2015-04-21T05:11:45","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T11:11:45","slug":"marbled-godwit-on-antelope-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/21\/marbled-godwit-on-antelope-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Marbled Godwit On Antelope Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Until yesterday I’d never seen a Marbled Godwit on Antelope Island so it was great fun to photograph this bird up close.<\/p>\n

It all started\u00a0while I was photographing a bit of a feeding frenzy involving a mixed group of several bird species – Long-billed Curlews, Willets, Franklin’s Gulls and California Gulls. There was apparently a localized grasshopper hatch and\u00a0the birds were scurrying around as they gobbled up their Orthopteran bounty. There were so many tiny cream-colored\u00a0grasshoppers jumping up in front of the hungry birds that it almost looked like popping popcorn.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"marbled<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Suddenly this\u00a0Marbled Godwit\u00a0flew in from out of nowhere, landed within a few feet of my pickup, and began to join in the frenzy. This photo was taken just after it landed. Based on the mud on the tip of the bill I’d guess that it was feeding on both newly-hatched grasshoppers and subterranean insects (and possibly plant tubers).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"marbled<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The bird was extremely tame and had absolutely no fear of my pickup, once coming in so close that I couldn’t focus on it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"marbled<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

At one point it pulled one of those twitchy little\u00a0moves that I have difficulty interpreting. It pulled one leg up behind its slightly raised\u00a0right wing, held the pose for a moment, and then…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"marbled<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

dropped the leg as it extended its wings. I have no idea what it was doing\u00a0(unless it was a threat display directed at another bird,\u00a0I don’t believe it was stretching\u00a0because it was too quick for that)\u00a0but I liked the pose because it revealed the cinnamon underwing.<\/p>\n

Marbled Godwits are common in some coastal areas where they winter and on their breeding grounds in the grasslands of the northern United States and southern Canada.\u00a0Some of them do migrate through northern Utah, as this one was apparently doing,\u00a0but prior to yesterday the only godwit I’ve ever photographed was an apparently\u00a0sick bird on Glover’s Pond a few years ago.<\/p>\n

So this one made my day.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Until yesterday I’d never seen a Marbled Godwit on Antelope Island so it was great fun to photograph this bird up close.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30890,"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":[3,334,2470],"tags":[31,817,2472,2471,866,825,311],"class_list":["post-30887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-marbled-godwit","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-grasshoppers","tag-hatch","tag-limosa-fedoa","tag-migration","tag-orthoptera","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/marbled-godwit-0962-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-82b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30887","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=30887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}