{"id":32358,"date":"2015-06-28T05:04:38","date_gmt":"2015-06-28T11:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=32358"},"modified":"2015-06-28T09:55:42","modified_gmt":"2015-06-28T15:55:42","slug":"sage-thrasher-rising-out-of-its-namesake-sagebrush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/28\/sage-thrasher-rising-out-of-its-namesake-sagebrush\/","title":{"rendered":"Sage Thrasher Rising Out Of Its Namesake Sagebrush"},"content":{"rendered":"

This bird was playing peekaboo with me before it took off.<\/p>\n

Sage Thrashers are sagebrush obligates and generally require large patches of\u00a0it for successful breeding. They’re truly at home in and on sagebrush- using it for cover, as a nesting site and as a singing perch. The vast majority of my photos of the species show sagebrush in the setting.<\/p>\n

The following three images are consecutive shots in a burst.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Eleven days ago I found this thrasher buried in the sagebrush on Antelope Island. When it squatted down its head was about all I could see so I attempted to focus on the eye and hoped for a takeoff that would give me a good look at the bird in an interesting flight posture which wasn’t likely for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But I actually liked the first shot as it launched. Normally it’s my preference to not have this much of a bird obscured by vegetation but this one works for me largely because it shows the thrasher rising almost phoenix-like out of the sagebrush that it’s so intimate with.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Typically, even at the 10 frames\/sec burst rate of my camera, I wouldn’t get this\u00a0last shot of a small\u00a0songbird taking off\u00a0because the bird would have already left the frame but I have a theory as to why I was successful this time. Because the thrasher was so deeply buried in the sagebrush it only had room for a shortened first down stroke of its wings so initially it didn’t get as much lift from that first stroke as it would from a more elevated perch.<\/p>\n

At least that’s my theory. Who knows what really happened…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Addendum: After the big deal I made about this thrasher being on sagebrush in this post it turns out that it isn’t sagebrush but rabbitbrush instead. I know the difference but just screwed up. Hate it when I make such a significant error in public! Won’t be the first time though, and probably not the last either. Thanks to Dan for alerting me in his comment below.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

This bird was playing peekaboo with me before it took off.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32360,"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":[3,334,379],"tags":[31,490,2348,146,1535,2549,271,644,605,311],"class_list":["post-32358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-sage-thrashers","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-burst-rate","tag-canon-7d-mark-ii","tag-flight","tag-oreoscoptes-montanus","tag-phoenix","tag-sage-thrasher","tag-sagebrush","tag-take-off","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/sage-thrasher-2009-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8pU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32358","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=32358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}