{"id":50319,"date":"2017-07-30T05:24:32","date_gmt":"2017-07-30T11:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=50319"},"modified":"2017-07-30T05:24:32","modified_gmt":"2017-07-30T11:24:32","slug":"fledgling-mountain-bluebirds-frick-and-frack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/30\/fledgling-mountain-bluebirds-frick-and-frack\/","title":{"rendered":"Fledgling Mountain Bluebirds – “Frick And Frack”"},"content":{"rendered":"

These two siblings seemed almost joined at the hip. Even their movements were choreographed.<\/p>\n

I photographed them a couple of weeks ago in the Centennial Valley of Montana. Most of these images have been significantly cropped and I often didn’t have enough depth of field to get both birds sharp so don’t expect great image quality.\u00a0And the wire behind the birds is far from ideal but these photos are meant as documentation of behavior and have no pretensions to anything more.<\/p>\n

I haven’t provided image techs because I simply ran out of time.<\/p>\n

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The two youngsters and their parents were hanging around a conglomeration of\u00a0posts and rails at a fence corner and this particular rail seemed to be their favorite perch. Perhaps the wire\u00a0behind them gave them a sense of security\u00a0though I was far from pleased\u00a0by it. The siblings were clingy and rarely left\u00a0each other’s side.<\/p>\n

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The bird on the right seemed slightly larger (older?)\u00a0than the other one\u00a0so it\u00a0usually took the lead in whatever they did and they often did it in unison. When the larger sibling became interested in the small knot in the wood below and in front of it the smaller bird…<\/p>\n

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followed suit.<\/p>\n

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And of course things like yawns and stretches are contagious so when the larger sibling began an awkward wing stretch the little guy…<\/p>\n

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joined in too.<\/p>\n

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But they spent much of their time cuddled up together while they waited for food deliveries from their parents.<\/p>\n

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Here’s a better look at one of the siblings. I love the prominent white eye ring of the juveniles.<\/p>\n

Mountain Bluebirds are always one of my photographic goals in the Centennial Valley but this time I didn’t get many chances with them. That’s partly because some of the bluebird boxes on the east end of Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife refuge have been removed for some reason and those boxes always provided the best morning light for photography.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – If you don’t understand the “Frick and Frack” reference in my title perhaps you’re just not old enough…<\/em><\/p>\n

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

These two siblings seemed almost joined at the hip. Even their movements were choreographed.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50328,"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":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":[334,1493,1504,391,360],"tags":[50,555,145,220,741,263,2986],"class_list":["post-50319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-mountain-bluebirds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","tag-behavior","tag-centennial-valley","tag-fledgling","tag-montana-2","tag-mountain-bluebird","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-sialia-currucoides"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/mountain-bluebird-4854b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-d5B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50319","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=50319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}