{"id":32670,"date":"2015-07-11T06:10:53","date_gmt":"2015-07-11T12:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=32670"},"modified":"2015-07-11T07:48:35","modified_gmt":"2015-07-11T13:48:35","slug":"a-nostalgic-look-at-the-male-williamsons-sapsucker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/11\/a-nostalgic-look-at-the-male-williamsons-sapsucker\/","title":{"rendered":"A Nostalgic Look At The Male Williamson’s Sapsucker"},"content":{"rendered":"

I sure do miss this\u00a0woodpecker and its mate. I photographed them for parts of two breeding seasons in\u00a0Clark County, Idaho but about a month ago some idiot chopped down their nest tree<\/a> (the one in these images) and I haven’t seen the birds since.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\"williamson's1\/2500, f\/5. ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon<\/strong> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Here the male had just landed at the nest cavity with a beak-full of ants for its chicks in the nest. The tree was within a campsite in a National Forest so the birds were used to the hubbub of campers and went about\u00a0their business with no sign of disturbance as I photographed them from my truck with a long lens\u00a0(we camped elsewhere because there was no cell signal here, which I needed to post my daily blog in the wee hours of the mornings).<\/p>\n

Because of conditions this was\u00a0one of\u00a0the most challenging sites at which I’ve photographed birds. Due to surrounding trees, light only hit the nest tree for a few hours in the late morning so the light was often mottled and changing rapidly and sometimes quite harsh. And\u00a0in an instant the background could go from deep black in the shadows to bright blue sky and everything in-between so proper exposure was a photographer’s nightmare. But I sure did get a lot of practice with my photography skills.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"williamson's<\/p>\n

This highly cropped-cropped version of the first image reveals a little more detail\u00a0of the ants the male was carrying. Unlike most other ant foraging species Williamson’s Sapsuckers do not regurgitate food to their young. Instead they fill up their\u00a0mouth, throat and bill with them so they can carry quite a load to the nest.\u00a0We’re probably only seeing a small portion of the ants carried in this trip. If some of those ants are still alive (and I believe they are) I can only imagine what it must feel like to have them crawling around (and presumably biting) their mouth, tongue\u00a0and throat. Makes me shudder to even think of it…<\/p>\n

This image was taken just over a year ago (July 1, 2014) and this male (presumably the same one)\u00a0was at the tree in early May of this year so if the tree hadn’t been chopped down the young would probably be about to fledge.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0do hope that they were able to successfully renest somewhere else. In this species some pairs do renest if the first nest fails early.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

An observation about this image: To my eye it almost looks like this bird was assembled incorrectly because the attachment of the wings appears to be at the back of the neck instead of on the upper back. I think that’s due to the pulled-back head position at landing. Maybe it’s just me…<\/em><\/p>\n

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

I sure do miss this woodpecker and its mate. I photographed them for parts of two breeding seasons in Clark County, Idaho but about a month ago some idiot chopped down their nest tree (the one in these images) and I haven’t seen the birds since.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32674,"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":[6,334,8,16,392,391,2089],"tags":[2091,2053,398,136,2032,211,2579,2039,2038],"class_list":["post-32670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-photography-ethics","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-nesting-and-mating","category-williamsons-sapsuckers","tag-ants","tag-clark-county","tag-exposure","tag-feeding","tag-idaho","tag-male","tag-nest-tree","tag-sphyrapicus-thyroideus","tag-williamsons-sapsucker"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/williamsons-sapsucker-2141-big-crop-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8uW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32670","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=32670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}