{"id":31653,"date":"2015-05-28T04:44:14","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T10:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=31653"},"modified":"2015-05-28T05:12:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T11:12:47","slug":"sequence-of-a-western-kingbird-casting-a-pellet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/28\/sequence-of-a-western-kingbird-casting-a-pellet\/","title":{"rendered":"Sequence of a Western Kingbird Casting A Pellet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Birds\u00a0typically eject pellets very quickly and this Western Kingbird was no exception.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 1250, 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

Three days ago on Antelope Island I was mostly watching it through my lens rather than photographing it because it had its back to me. Here the bird looked over its shoulder as if to see if I was watching…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

and then it began to retch. In times like this I’m glad for the 10 frames\/sec burst rate of the Canon 7D Mark II because it allows me to catch more of the fast action than I used to be able to capture. It happens so quickly that I often don’t even know if I’ve got the pellet in frame as it falls away until I’ve reviewed my images.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This time I got it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In fact I got it twice,\u00a0though it isn’t very sharp in\u00a0the second\u00a0shot.\u00a0 Different species have varying styles in casting pellets. In some the pellet mostly drops in front of them but Western Kingbirds seem to fling it away from them by violently shaking their heads.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Immediately after the pellet was ejected the bird seemed to perform a celebratory dance on top of the twig before it flew off.<\/p>\n

Birds\u00a0Of North\u00a0America\u00a0Online says that they have “no information” on pellet casting in Western Kingbirds but I’ve photographed the behavior three times over the years. Several years ago I sent them a link to some images demonstrating pellet casting in the species and they asked to use the images on their site, which I allowed, but as of this morning they apparently still haven’t used them and the text still reads “no information”.<\/p>\n

Perhaps they’ll change it on their next scheduled update of the Western Kingbird species account.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Birds typically eject pellets very quickly and this Western Kingbird was no exception.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31657,"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":[31,2289,2348,245,677,311,676],"class_list":["post-31653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-bna-online","tag-canon-7d-mark-ii","tag-pellet","tag-tyrannus-verticalus","tag-utah-2","tag-western-kingbird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/western-kingbird-2518-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8ex","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31653","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=31653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133376,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31653\/revisions\/133376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}