{"id":31490,"date":"2015-05-20T05:09:23","date_gmt":"2015-05-20T11:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=31490"},"modified":"2015-05-20T05:09:23","modified_gmt":"2015-05-20T11:09:23","slug":"chukar-wish-for-it-and-it-may-happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/20\/chukar-wish-for-it-and-it-may-happen\/","title":{"rendered":"Chukar – Wish For It And It May Happen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently while photographing birds on Antelope Island I remarked to Mia that I’d like to photograph a Chukar doing a wing-stretch, something\u00a0I’d only seen once in the past. I’ve often wondered why they so rarely do it and came up with a working theory that goes something like this\u00a0– many birds stretch their wings in preparation for flight after an extended period of rest but Chukars seldom fly so they have less need for stretching (that’s only a guess of course).<\/p>\n

Then, just a day or two later (10 days ago), it happened.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"chukar<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/9, 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

As they often do this time of year this Chukar was apparently doing sentry duty atop this large, white lichen-encrusted\u00a0rock and calling intermittently.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"chukar<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1000, f\/9, 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

Soon (as the light changed and cut my shutter speed in half)\u00a0the bird began to preen. Many bird species would follow up such a grooming session with a wing-stretch but I just didn’t expect it from a Chukar.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"chukar<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1000, f\/9, 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

But that’s exactly what it did and it even chose to\u00a0stretch\u00a0the wing facing me and\u00a0included one leg in the process.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"chukar<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1000, f\/9, 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

Then after its almost\u00a0unprecedented (for me)\u00a0performance the Chukar exited at stage left in traditional fashion, by hopping down from the rock instead of flying off. I thought it was pretty neat that my wish to photograph the behavior came true so quickly after making it.<\/p>\n

Next time I think I’ll wish for a Golden Eagle. Fighting with a couple of ravens. Over prey. In good light. Close…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Recently while photographing birds on Antelope Island I remarked to Mia that I’d like to photograph a Chukar doing a wing-stretch, something I’d only seen once in the past.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31493,"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":[334],"tags":[26,31,82,511,311],"class_list":["post-31490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","tag-alectoris-chukar","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-chukar","tag-stretching","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/chukar-9332-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8bU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31490","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=31490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}