{"id":31685,"date":"2015-05-30T07:15:32","date_gmt":"2015-05-30T13:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=31685"},"modified":"2015-05-30T08:23:09","modified_gmt":"2015-05-30T14:23:09","slug":"a-couple-of-bear-river-skulkers-long-tailed-weasel-and-virginia-rail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/30\/a-couple-of-bear-river-skulkers-long-tailed-weasel-and-virginia-rail\/","title":{"rendered":"A Couple Of Bear River Skulkers – Long-tailed Weasel and Virginia Rail"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two unusual subjects for me on the same morning – for me that’s unheard of.<\/p>\n

I spent yesterday morning at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and had a glorious time but the morning sure didn’t start out that way. The automatic gate at the refuge is supposed to open at sunrise (6AM this time of year) but when\u00a0we arrived at about 7 (after a 90 minute drive)\u00a0the gate was still closed and there were now several angry birders\/photographers chomping at the bit. Eventually it opened but after losing some of the best light of the day photographers in particular weren’t happy campers.<\/p>\n

Mia posted a query asking why the gate was still closed (and when it might open)\u00a0to the Bear River MBR Facebook page but\u00a0they have yet to respond…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"long-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1 ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, setup or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

But this little feller helped to brighten my morning. Long-tailed Weasels are common but seldom seen (or at least approached closely)\u00a0on the refuge but this one approached me, probably out of curiosity.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"long-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1 ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, setup or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

And it came in close more than once. The light angle was poor and I could barely twist backwards in my pickup far enough to get my lens on the furtive little mustelid but I was able to get a few shots\u00a0that\u00a0are ok.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"long-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1 ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, setup or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once he\/she came in too close for my big lens but of course I fired away despite that. The weasel was as much fun just to see as it was to get photos of. In all my years of making trips to Bear River this was only the third time I’ve been able to photograph a weasel up close at the refuge.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"virginia<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L @ 400mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

My second unusual encounter of the morning was with this Virginia Rail, a species that is often heard but seldom seen. It popped up out of the grasses so close to the road that I had to reach for my shorter lens. This bird had what seemed like about a dozen\u00a0tiny black chicks following it around but I never was able to get any photos of them because they stayed deeply buried in the grasses.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"virginia<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L @ 400mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The rail only stayed out in the relative open for a few moments but in that short time it did find prey. I was curious about what the food item was so I did a tight crop on the head but still wasn’t able to ID it definitively. My best guess is that it was either a small snail or an isopod (possibly a “pillbug”).<\/p>\n

No, I didn’t get any great shots of either the weasel or the rail but a big part of the reason I’m a nature photographer is to experience nature and both of these encounters helped to scratch that itch.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – Sorry about the late post this morning. More “technical difficulties”…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two unusual subjects for me on the same morning – for me that’s unheard of.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31688,"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":[49,2506,209,1133,2507,895,894],"class_list":["post-31685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-isopod","tag-long-tailed-weasel","tag-mustela-frenata","tag-pillbug","tag-rallus-limicola","tag-virginia-rail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/virginia-rail-6970-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8f3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31685","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=31685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}