{"id":33510,"date":"2015-08-19T05:23:22","date_gmt":"2015-08-19T11:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=33510"},"modified":"2015-08-19T05:23:22","modified_gmt":"2015-08-19T11:23:22","slug":"wilsons-phalarope-plumages-and-feeding-techniques","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/19\/wilsons-phalarope-plumages-and-feeding-techniques\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilson’s Phalarope Plumages And Feeding Techniques"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wilson’s Phalaropes have several interesting plumages and feeding techniques.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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

I photographed this nonbreeding adult a few days ago at Bear River MBR. It was mixed in with a small flock of other phalaropes as they fed\u00a0using their typical spinning\u00a0“whirling dervish” technique to bring up food from the bottom. That behavior is difficult to photograph well so I’ve not included a photo of it here but I can tell you that watching them spin through my lens literally made me dizzy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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

This is a juvenile, mixed in with the same flock. Juveniles are more colorful than adults.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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 adults in the breeding season are more colorful – each of these last two images was taken in June. I believe this bird to be a female.<\/p>\n

Wilson’s Phalaropes are noted for their reversed sex-role mating system. Females are larger and more brightly colored than males and females compete for mates rather than vice versa. And it’s the males that provide all parental care for\u00a0the offspring.<\/p>\n

This image shows another interesting feeding technique of the species. Wilson’s Phalaropes use surface tension of a film of water between their mandibles to transport food from the tip of their beak to the mouth. Here the bird has\u00a0an aquatic invertebrate in its bill and that film of water can be seen as a pale blue line between the\u00a0prey and mouth of the bird.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, 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

Here another adult female is pursuing a midge in the\u00a0air. They often lunge\/stab at flying insects\u00a0and this attempt was successful though my image of the actual\u00a0capture was even softer than this one.<\/p>\n

Large numbers of Wilson’s Phalaropes stage at hypersaline\/alkaline lakes of western North America as they migrate to their wintering habitats in Bolivia and Argentina. We get many of them here near the Great Salt Lake.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Wilson’s Phalaropes have several interesting plumages and feeding techniques.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33512,"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":[334,438],"tags":[24,49,2550,137,160,190,2632,217,866,2630,1837,2631,432],"class_list":["post-33510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-wilsons-phalarope-shore-birds","tag-adult","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-box-elder-county-utah","tag-female","tag-great-salt-lake","tag-juvenile","tag-mating-system","tag-midge","tag-migration","tag-phalaropus-tricolor","tag-plumage","tag-spinning","tag-wilsons-phalarope"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/wilsons-phalarope-1198-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8Iu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33510","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=33510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}