{"id":38318,"date":"2016-03-24T06:25:10","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T12:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=38318"},"modified":"2016-03-24T19:27:43","modified_gmt":"2016-03-25T01:27:43","slug":"peregrine-falcon-along-the-antelope-island-causeway-yesterday-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/24\/peregrine-falcon-along-the-antelope-island-causeway-yesterday-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"Peregrine Falcon Along The Antelope Island Causeway Yesterday Morning"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a long time since I’ve found a mostly cooperative Peregrine\u00a0Falcon on or near Antelope Island.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"peregrine1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This juvenile was perched on the mudflats near the road as I was leaving the island yesterday morning. I spent 10 wonderful minutes with the falcon until a huge, fast and loud FedEx truck came along and scared the bird off. Here it’s\u00a0flying\u00a0partly away from me but I like the shot because of the good look at almost the entire dorsal surface, the widely flared tail\u00a0and the head turn as the falcon is looking back at me. I also\u00a0enjoy the contrasting colors of the background. The bird has some food debris hanging down from its beak.<\/p>\n

At first I was seriously taken aback by the gray color\u00a0that appears on the upper back of the bird and wondered if\u00a0it could be caused by dried\u00a0mud or some other debris. It’s something that I had never seen (or at least\u00a0noticed) before on either an adult or a juvenile Peregrine Falcon. I also wondered if it could be caused by an effect of the light\u00a0but I have almost 300 shots of this bird and when I can see its back the grays appear in all of them.<\/p>\n

But in the end I believe\u00a0this falcon is probably transitioning from juvenile to adult plumage and those grays are\u00a0the blue-grays of the adult. That theory may be reinforced by the single uppertail covert that is\u00a0a similar, well-defined\u00a0bluish-gray.<\/p>\n

Any thoughts on the subject from those in the know? I’m far from an authority on plumage and molt patterns so I’d appreciate any feedback.<\/p>\n

I’ll likely post more images of this falcon sometime down the road.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

A Late Addendum: Dan Weisz sent me this image of a 1 year old male Peregrine Falcon (a rehab\/educational bird)\u00a0transitioning from juvenile to adult plumage. It shows the blue\/gray feathers of the adult plumage coming in\u00a0on the back and elsewhere\u00a0– quite similar to the bird I’ve posted. <\/em><\/p>\n

I thought some readers might like to see it. Thank you, Dan!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"1<\/p>\n

Copyright Dan Weisz\/Arizona Desert Museum\u00a0– Image used by permission<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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

It’s been a long time since I’ve found a mostly cooperative Peregrine Falcon on or near Antelope Island.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38321,"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":[3,334,582],"tags":[31,539,583,749,541,1392,2895],"class_list":["post-38318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-peregrine-falcons","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-causeway","tag-falco-peregrinus","tag-molt","tag-peregrine-falcon","tag-plumage-pattern","tag-transitioning-from-juvenile-to-adult"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/peregrine-falcon-2530b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9Y2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38318","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=38318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}