{"id":46648,"date":"2017-03-13T06:04:58","date_gmt":"2017-03-13T12:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=46648"},"modified":"2017-03-13T06:26:11","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T12:26:11","slug":"my-female-kingfisher-is-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/13\/my-female-kingfisher-is-back\/","title":{"rendered":"“My” Female Kingfisher Is Back!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think I need to go to the grocery store more often.<\/p>\n

Readers will remember that I posted some pretty dramatic photos of a Cooper’s Hawk trying to fly with a pigeon in its talons<\/a> three\u00a0days ago.\u00a0I found those birds on\u00a0a street in my neighborhood while I was driving to the supermarket. Well, on my way home from\u00a0that same\u00a0grocery store yesterday I made a\u00a0detour to an urban pond to see if “my” female Belted Kingfisher was there. She’d been fairly reliable during certain months over the last couple of years but I haven’t seen her for a very<\/em> long time. I’ve probably made 50-60 trips to the pond since nesting season began last year (when she disappeared)\u00a0but she’s never been there.<\/p>\n

Until yesterday!<\/p>\n

Of course I didn’t have my\u00a0big gun 500mm lens with me to go buy groceries so I\u00a0raced home (never breaking the speed limit of course… – hah!), grabbed my other gear and headed back to the pond. She was still there.<\/p>\n

I didn’t get any great shots (partly because of incredible clutter in most of\u00a0her preferred\u00a0fishing perches)\u00a0but I did get some interesting ones and I’m hoping there’ll be more opportunities with her down the road.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/7.1, 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><\/p>\n

Some readers may remember this curved perch from previous images I’ve posted of her (of course I’m not positive it’s the same bird but I strongly suspect it is). She obviously still has an affinity for it because she spent much of her time fishing from\u00a0there yesterday.<\/p>\n

I like this perky pose.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, 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><\/p>\n

There was a stiff breeze blowing from behind her that kept blowing her crest the “wrong” way and mussing her feathers but she ignored it as she mostly concentrated on the pond below.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, 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><\/p>\n

She dived for fish many times but was usually unsuccessful. When she’d return to the perch she’d vigorously shake all her feathers\u00a0which produced some poses I thought were interesting. Her nictitating membranes were usually closed during the process.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, 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><\/p>\n

Her dives for fish were incredibly quick so I usually missed them. This series of two images was one of the few times I didn’t end up with “air shots” or clipped body parts.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, 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><\/p>\n

I was impressed that my Canon 7D Mark II was able to keep focus locked onto the\u00a0bird while\u00a0she was coming toward me at this speed. This dive was the only time I saw her…<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, 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><\/p>\n

come up with a fish. She landed with it on a different perch and turned my way for a moment before she swallowed the fish with her back to me. This shot is typical of the cluttered backgrounds in most of my photos of her.<\/p>\n

You can probably tell I was pretty excited to see her\u00a0– it seemed like finding an old friend again after a long separation. Hopefully next time (if there is one) I’ll have a little more luck finding her on uncluttered perches and photographing her in flight and coming out of the water after a dive.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I think I need to go to the grocery store more often.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46649,"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":[2853,334,392],"tags":[2329,141,144,146,2330,1240],"class_list":["post-46648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belted-kingfishers","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-belted-kingfisher","tag-fish","tag-fishing","tag-flight","tag-megaceryle-alcyon","tag-shaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/belted-kingfisher-3970-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-c8o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46648","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=46648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}