{"id":38181,"date":"2016-03-18T06:18:20","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T12:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=38181"},"modified":"2016-03-18T06:29:38","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T12:29:38","slug":"my-first-mountain-bluebird-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/18\/my-first-mountain-bluebird-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"My First Mountain Bluebird Of The Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been trying to get close to Mountain Bluebirds here in Wayne County for three days now without a lick of success. This time of year they’re about as skittish as any bird I know and most of them will be until breeding season behaviors make them considerably “stickier”.<\/p>\n

But yesterday I tried a different tack and found a single cooperative bird.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"mountain<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, processed on a laptop, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

We’re camped out in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain at about 8,000′ and our primitive campsite is surrounded by Pinyon Pines. From my camping trailer window we noticed that bluebirds and jays habitually perched in a clump of 3 pinyons near our campsite so I moved my pickup near the clump, used my vehicle as a mobile blind and waited for birds to appear.<\/p>\n

A few did and this female Mountain Bluebird actually came in close enough for some photos. From her demeanor she was obviously curious about us and that big piece of shiny (actually muddy) metal we were in. In fact she may have been actually challenging us as she sat on this close\u00a0perch for 3 minutes, staring intently at us the entire time.<\/p>\n

The light was just a little harsh and I’m definitely not happy with the out of focus cluster of needles in front of her rump but as far as I can tell on this laptop the image is sharp and I have plenty of detail.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"mountain<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, processed on a laptop, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I was quite close and shooting with the teleconverter attached so I knew I’d have to get lucky to avoid clipping body parts when she took off so every time she fluttered in the considerable wind I fired off a burst just in case\u00a0it was preliminary to launch. In this case it was and I caught her just as she lifted her wings and pushed off.<\/p>\n

In the next shot of the burst I cut off both her\u00a0beak and her raised wings.<\/p>\n

Par for the course…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I’ve been trying to get close to Mountain Bluebirds here in Wayne County for three days now without a lick of success. But yesterday I tried a different tack and found a single cooperative bird. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38183,"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":[334,1504],"tags":[137,741,2832,1505,311,1909],"class_list":["post-38181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-mountain-bluebirds","tag-female","tag-mountain-bluebird","tag-pinyon-pine","tag-sialia-currocoides","tag-utah-2","tag-wayne-county"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/mountain-bluebird-1218b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9VP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38181","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=38181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}