{"id":30937,"date":"2015-04-23T05:31:04","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T11:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=30937"},"modified":"2015-04-23T05:49:32","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T11:49:32","slug":"sage-thrashers-courtship-display-and-prey-for-their-youngsters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/23\/sage-thrashers-courtship-display-and-prey-for-their-youngsters\/","title":{"rendered":"Sage Thrashers – Courtship Display And Prey For Their Youngsters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sage Thrasher spring activities have been ramping up for weeks and I’ve been lucky enough to photograph a variety of them.<\/p>\n

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\"sage<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, 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

I photographed this Bilateral Wing Display four days ago on Antelope Island. It’s part of their courtship display and I’ve invested a lot of effort in photographing it with limited success, partly because (according to Birds of North America Online) it’s “only rarely seen”. During the display the thrasher raises and flutters its wings for several seconds while continuing to sing. The behavior is thought to be part of courtship and to function as a threat to other\u00a0thrashers. This bird allowed me the closest look and the best light (both marginal) I’ve been able to get so far.<\/p>\n

But as of yesterday (when each of the following photos was taken) I believe thrasher courtship displays may be largely over for the season, partly because many thrashers are already feeding young in the nest.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, 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

The thrashers were obviously feeding their hungry chicks because they repeatedly landed on top of the sage and rabbitbrush with food and then dived down into the bushes with it. The preferred fare was grasshoppers and this one has two of them in its beak.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, 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><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The curious biologist in me can’t resist a closer look at their diet so I cropped the image close for more detail. The grasshoppers appear to be of different species and the one on the right is quite colorful for my area (based on my anecdotal observations).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, 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

This thrasher landed close to me and when it took off it made a twisting turn to avoid the twigs which gave me a fairly good look at its prey, perhaps a spider. Or two.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, 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

I was slightly surprised to see grasshoppers this large so early in the season. Just three days ago I saw thousands of\u00a0newly hatched grasshoppers fleeing from hungry birds but they were only about the size of a grain of rice. I imagine different species mature at different times.<\/p>\n

Young Sage Thrashers begin to leave the nest at the ripe old age of 9 days and typically there are 4-5 eggs in a clutch so I have hopes of photographing parents feeding fledglings on top of the sagebrush soon.<\/p>\n

Time will tell if I’m successful.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: In the past some readers have been a bit taken aback when I’ve referred to the insect food of songbirds as “prey”.\u00a0Webster defines prey as ”\u00a0an animal that is hunted or killed by another animal for food”. Both insects and birds are animals\u00a0so for me it’s an appropriate term for the situation\u00a0and I continue to use it in this context.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sage Thrasher spring activities have been ramping up for weeks and I’ve been lucky enough to photograph a variety of them.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30939,"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":[3,334,392,391,379],"tags":[2444,733,824,230,1535,271],"class_list":["post-30937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-nesting-and-mating","category-sage-thrashers","tag-bilateral-wing-display","tag-courtship","tag-grasshopper","tag-nesting","tag-oreoscoptes-montanus","tag-sage-thrasher"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/sage-thrasher-2271-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-82Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30937","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=30937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}