{"id":37765,"date":"2016-02-28T05:44:39","date_gmt":"2016-02-28T12:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=37765"},"modified":"2016-02-28T06:25:27","modified_gmt":"2016-02-28T13:25:27","slug":"kingfisher-never-losing-hunting-concentration-during-a-stretch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/28\/kingfisher-never-losing-hunting-concentration-during-a-stretch\/","title":{"rendered":"Kingfisher Never Losing Hunting Concentration During A Stretch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not even the need to stretch distracted this female\u00a0kingfisher from\u00a0her concentration on the pond in front of her.<\/p>\n

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\"belted<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I photographed her 5 days ago near the Jordan River as she was fishing above a small pond. When I snapped this photo she had already maintained this exact pose for some time as she stared intently at the water’s surface below and in front of her. She had a favorite spot on the pond she liked to fish and I believe she was looking right at it.<\/p>\n

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\"belted<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even when a sudden urge to stretch came upon her as she was turning on the perch\u00a0she seemed to continue staring at that same area of the pond. In this\u00a0image her nictitating membrane is partially closed which might make her direction of focus slightly less obvious but in the next shot in the burst…<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

it seems fairly obvious to me that she\u00a0is continuing to look intently at that same small area on the pond as she stretches her right wing and lifts her stubby right\u00a0leg and foot off the perch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the stretch was over she apparently continued to stare at the same spot. That’s concentration!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

But when she eventually did dive on a fish it was to an area closer to her\u00a0on the pond’s surface than the spot she’d been staring at. And if I remember correctly, this time she missed the fish. Even though the bird is soft in this image I decided to include it to\u00a0help finish telling the story.<\/p>\n

While I was preparing this post something interesting in the second image caught my eye. Before scrolling further\u00a0I suggest that you go back and look at it again – do you see it?<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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\"belted<\/p>\n

A very large crop makes it more obvious. Her right foot and leg are turned at an odd and uncomfortable-looking angle that I’ve never noticed on a bird before. I suspect that’s why her foot is raised in the third shot as she realigned her foot on the\u00a0branch after she turned\u00a0on the perch.<\/p>\n

No big deal I guess but\u00a0I didn’t\u00a0even know that birds could do<\/em> that.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Not even the need to stretch distracted this female kingfisher from her concentration on the pond in front of her.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37768,"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":[2853,334],"tags":[2329,144,188,2330,515,511,311],"class_list":["post-37765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belted-kingfishers","category-birds","tag-belted-kingfisher","tag-fishing","tag-jordan-river","tag-megaceryle-alcyon","tag-nictitating-membrane","tag-stretching","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/belted-kingfisher-6225-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9P7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37765","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=37765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}