{"id":34712,"date":"2015-10-17T06:55:07","date_gmt":"2015-10-17T12:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=34712"},"modified":"2015-10-17T06:55:07","modified_gmt":"2015-10-17T12:55:07","slug":"american-pipits-gorging-on-midges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/17\/american-pipits-gorging-on-midges\/","title":{"rendered":"American Pipits Gorging On Midges"},"content":{"rendered":"

American Pipits have been having a field day with midges at Farmington this week.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/p>\n

1\/2500, 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

I only see pipits during migration in my area and right now they’re here in large numbers as they gorge on midges around the Great Salt Lake and they usually don’t have to work very hard to catch them. The midges buzz around in the air and land on rocks and vegetation and the birds pick them off at their\u00a0leisure.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/p>\n

1\/2500, 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 the pipit is tracking the midge in front of it, anticipating that it will fly closer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/p>\n

1\/2500, 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

When it didn’t the bird took a single step forward, snagged it out of the air…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/p>\n

1\/2000, 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

and gobbled it down.<\/p>\n

Midges are very small (roughly\u00a0the size of a mosquito)\u00a0and difficult for us to see so…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/6.3. ISO 800, 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 decided to include this highly cropped image taken the next day, also at Farmington. The image was taken at dawn with light on the bird and a deeply shaded background. This bird seemed to savor the\u00a0snack for just a moment before gulping it down which allowed me a fairly good look at the tiny insect.<\/p>\n

I usually can’t get this close to pipits but on this early morning it was still cold and the bird must have been hungry after a long night so it didn’t want to abandon a good foraging spot.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

American Pipits have been having a field day with midges at Farmington this week.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34717,"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":[1789,2712,1008,136,837,1980],"class_list":["post-34712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","tag-american-pipit","tag-anthus-rubescens","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-feeding","tag-insects","tag-midges"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/american-pipit-8908-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-91S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34712","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=34712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}