they’re spooky and elusive which makes them a worthy challenge for the bird photographer<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nEach of the following photos was taken on the same morning this past April on Antelope Island.<\/p>\n
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![\"sage-thrasher-2471b-ron-dudley\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/sage-thrasher-2471b-ron-dudley.jpg\")
1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 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>\nWhen a bird is preening it’s always a challenge to catch it in an interesting pose and get eye contact at the same time. Their movements are quick so the photographer has to be too. This thrasher was grooming on top of rabbitbrush and I caught it all fluffed up with its tail spread which revealed the white tips of the outer retrices that we don’t normally see.<\/p>\n
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![\"sage-thrasher-2042b-ron-dudley\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/sage-thrasher-2042b-ron-dudley.jpg\")
1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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>\nThis is the Bilateral Wing Display that I try so hard to photograph but usually fail in my attempts. I see them doing it fairly often but they’re shy about it whenever I’m close and usually they have their back to me. This one momentarily forgot its uncooperative habits and performed for me up close and at a nice angle on top of sagebrush.<\/p>\n
During the display they raise one or both wings and flutter them for several seconds while continuing to sing. These displays are thought to play a role in both courtship and aggressive behavior toward other adult thrashers.<\/p>\n
I didn’t post many\u00a0Sage Thrasher\u00a0images this past summer so I thought I’d try to make up for it this morning.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
PS – On an unrelated note some readers\u00a0have shown interest in (and sympathy for) my recent\u00a0bout with unfortunate events and bad luck so I thought I’d share the most recent occurrence. It may or may not signal\u00a0a trend in a more positive direction.<\/em><\/p>\nYesterday morning Mia noticed that\u00a0the registration on my pickup had expired which meant I’d been driving illegally for two months! Normally the state sends me notification in plenty of time to get my registration renewed in a timely\u00a0manner but this time I never received it so it\u00a0just didn’t enter my\u00a0mind. I immediately went down and took care of it\u00a0and the gentleman who handled the paperwork told me that if registration has been expired for 3 months they can and often do\u00a0impound your vehicle. That got my attention!<\/em><\/p>\nI guess an optimist would say this was a stroke of good luck because my pickup wasn’t impounded. But being a pessimist by nature\u00a0I have to wonder which way the trend will go. \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sage Thrashers have been described as “rather plain and unremarkable” but I love’em.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43844,"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":[3,334,391,379],"tags":[31,3202,3111,2000,1535,255,271,289,311],"class_list":["post-43840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-sage-thrashers","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-bllateral-wing-display","tag-davis-county","tag-flight-display","tag-oreoscoptes-montanus","tag-preening","tag-sage-thrasher","tag-song","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/sage-thrasher-2042b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-bp6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43840","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=43840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}