{"id":43729,"date":"2016-11-23T06:38:44","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T13:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=43729"},"modified":"2016-11-23T08:37:22","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T15:37:22","slug":"a-highly-entertaining-belted-kingfisher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/23\/a-highly-entertaining-belted-kingfisher\/","title":{"rendered":"A Highly Entertaining Belted Kingfisher"},"content":{"rendered":"

This kingfisher needs some practice with his fish-handling skills.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning I spent some time with the male Belted Kingfisher at Farmington. This bird is becoming quite well known among local photographers and birders but it was just after dawn and we had him to ourselves for about a half hour. That early in the morning the kingfisher is side-lit while it’s fishing from its favorite perch so shooting conditions were very difficult but the bird was actively fishing so I couldn’t resist firing away and hoping to get lucky.<\/p>\n

None of my photos from this session were excellent technically but I think I got some interesting shots anyway.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted-kingfisher-9792c-ron-dudley\"1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Here the bird is about to land on its preferred perch after catching a small fish in the creek below the post. I love\u00a0his landing posture with his body in a perfectly vertical position and the wings and tail flared in order to quickly reduce his air speed and reduce the impact of landing – after all, those stiff and\u00a0stubby little legs won’t be able to cushion much of that impact. Kingfishers have extremely short legs and this photo illustrates that fact very well.\u00a0Those legs are extended as far as they will go.<\/p>\n

Even though it’s less than perfect technically this is still\u00a0one of my favorite kingfisher images. Ever.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted-kingfisher-9794b-ron-dudley\"1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This shot was taken soon after he landed with the fish.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted-kingfisher-9815-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Typical of kingfishers this bird tossed the fish up into the air before gulping it down. At least that was his plan… (I was very disappointed to lose sharp focus on this shot but in bird photography “stuff” happens).<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"belted-kingfisher-9816-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But as the fish came down it glanced off the side of his bill…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted-kingfisher-9817-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

and bounced far off to the side.<\/p>\n

I love the kingfisher’s look of consternation! He then flew down to try to retrieve the fish but I don’t know if it fell onto the ground or into the water so the outcome for the fish is unknown.<\/p>\n

But if it fell into the water that had to be the luckiest fish in the world.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

This kingfisher needs some practice with his fish-handling skills.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43734,"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":true,"_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":[2853,334,2782,392],"tags":[2329,1008,141,144,146,579,211,2330,3197],"class_list":["post-43729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belted-kingfishers","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-belted-kingfisher","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-fish","tag-fishing","tag-flight","tag-landing","tag-male","tag-megaceryle-alcyon","tag-tossing-fish"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/belted-kingfisher-9792c-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-bnj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43729","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=43729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}