{"id":45538,"date":"2017-01-30T05:57:04","date_gmt":"2017-01-30T12:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=45538"},"modified":"2017-01-30T06:06:47","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T13:06:47","slug":"california-quail-by-the-jordan-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/30\/california-quail-by-the-jordan-river\/","title":{"rendered":"California Quail By The Jordan River"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three days ago I found a covey of California Quail down by the Jordan River. I watched them forage for food for a while and then something interesting happened.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, 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<\/p>\n

Notice the blue of the pond behind the brush in the upper background. It’s a small pond lined with trees so when a large flock of Canada Geese decided to land on the pond they had to come in at a very\u00a0steep angle\u00a0and barely over the treetops. To\u00a0the foraging quail the sudden appearance of the\u00a0geese directly overhead\u00a0must have seemed like a noisy (honking)\u00a0squadron of attacking B-52’s because they panicked and dove into the brush for cover.<\/p>\n

The first quail to reappear was this male. He was apparently their appointed sentry (typical behavior for quail) because he stood on this spot for over 10 minutes as the other quail slowly reemerged. And I mean he didn’t move<\/em> for the entire time. I drove away to check out possible birds on the river and when I returned he was still there in the same position. I have no idea how long he played the frozen bird role because when I eventually\u00a0left for home he still hadn’t twitched a feather or changed his foot position.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, 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<\/p>\n

Nearly all of my shots of these quail had cluttered settings but I thought I’d include this one for its good look at that scaled breast – perhaps the best field mark for distinguishing California Quail from the very similar Gambel’s Quail.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, 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<\/p>\n

I enjoy this last photo because of the water background (an unusual setting for the species in my experience), the running pose and the good look at the head plume or topknot. That topknot may look like a single feather but it’s actually a cluster of six overlapping feathers\u00a0(black in males and dark brown in females). Sadly I wasn’t able to get any decent shots of females that day.<\/p>\n

This was the first time I’ve seen quail in the vicinity of the river so you can bet I’ll be looking for them on future trips to the area.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Three days ago I found a covey of California Quail down by the Jordan River. I watched them forage for food for a while and then something interesting happened.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45544,"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":[334,2515,395],"tags":[2512,2513,3274,188,211,3089,1101,3275],"class_list":["post-45538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-california-quail","category-miscellaneous","tag-california-quail","tag-callipepla-californica","tag-head-plume","tag-jordan-river","tag-male","tag-salt-lake-county","tag-sentry","tag-topknot"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/california-quail-7708b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-bQu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45538","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=45538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}