1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\nBut in this shot (the very next frame after the\u00a0previous photo) the upper bill has been\u00a0“bent” into a\u00a0much straighter shape and no longer\u00a0conforms to the\u00a0curve of the lower bill.\u00a0 This only lasted for an instant and in the next shot in the burst the shape had returned to “normal”.\u00a0\u00a0 The upper bill can also be flexed in the\u00a0opposite direction, making its shape more curved than normal which means the two bills would touch only in front and back, leaving a gap in the middle.\u00a0 The advantage of rhyncokinesis is\u00a0obvious\u00a0for shorebirds who use their bills for probing for food in mud, dirt and sand\u00a0but the adaptive advantage for birds who don’t probe for food is not fully understood.<\/p>\n
I love catching this kind of “stuff” in my photographs.\u00a0 There’s always an interesting surprise or two\u00a0to be found “out there” if you take lots of shots and are observant enough before you hit the\u00a0delete key.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Each\u00a0day for the past several weeks while\u00a0on our way out to the island either Mia or I will say to the other “I wonder if we’ll see or hear the curlews this morning”.\u00a0 For both of us the return of the curlews is a sure sign that true spring has finally arrived.\u00a0 And each morning we’ve been disappointed. Until yesterday!\u00a0 We first heard them while waiting for some magpies to return to their nest and then looked up and\u00a0saw\u00a0several flying toward us. 1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4 This bird is one of them – a truly unremarkable photograph except for its significance to us.\u00a0 It’s almost like this bird (and its companion) were flying over us to personally announce their return to us.\u00a0 The curlews are back – finally! \u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc \u00a0It wasn’t long before we were able to find several curlews foraging on the ground and they even let us\u00a0 get close.\u00a0 This one is busy preening in the morning sun. \u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc Rhyncokinesis (rhynco – upper beak or bill, kinesis\u00a0– movement or motion) is the ability of some birds to bend or flex their upper bill.\u00a0 Only cranes, shorebirds, swifts and hummingbirds are known to be capable of doing\u00a0so.\u00a0 The bill is made of a protein called keratin (like hair or fingernails) and it’s quite a remarkable feat to be able to control its shape to some degree.\u00a0 Notice in the photo above that\u00a0the shapes…<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5,334,369,395],"tags":[31,682,208,427,255,681,311],"class_list":["post-4907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-behaviors","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-long-billed-curlews","category-miscellaneous","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-keratin","tag-long-billed-curlew","tag-numenius-americanus","tag-preening","tag-rhyncokinesis","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-1h9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4907","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=4907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"long-billed-curlew-7424\"](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/long-billed-curlew-7424.jpg\" "\\"long-billed-curlew-7424\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n