{"id":50447,"date":"2017-08-05T04:45:47","date_gmt":"2017-08-05T10:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=50447"},"modified":"2017-08-05T05:40:45","modified_gmt":"2017-08-05T11:40:45","slug":"western-kingbirds-putting-a-poor-beetle-through-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/05\/western-kingbirds-putting-a-poor-beetle-through-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Kingbirds Putting A Poor Beetle Through Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"

These photos aren’t high quality but I got a big kick\u00a0out of them anyway.<\/p>\n

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A couple of days ago I photographed an adult Western Kingbird feeding two recent fledglings on Antelope Island (I’ll refer to this bird as a male though I don’t know its sex).\u00a0After catching an insect he would usually land on one of several wire cages protecting small trees\u00a0and “work over” the bug a bit, presumably to kill\u00a0or immobilize it before offering it to one of the youngsters. That’s what he’s beginning to do\u00a0here to a fairly large black beetle.<\/p>\n

But the beetle had other plans…<\/p>\n

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and somehow made its escape. I don’t know if the beetle\u00a0jumped out of his bill or the bill manipulations of the adult threw it to the side (or a combination of both)\u00a0but either way it\u00a0was looking\u00a0like this meal wasn’t going to happen.<\/p>\n

But the reflexes, speed and athleticism of birds are hard to believe. Here the kingbird has already reacted to the loss by raising its wings and lowering its tail to an extreme position with pursuit in mind. Think about the unusual position of that spread\u00a0tail. Wings are designed primarily to lift during the down-stroke but this bird has to go down fast and at a very steep angle if he has any chance at catching the beetle.<\/p>\n

As he took off in pursuit he quickly raised his already\u00a0flared tail…<\/p>\n

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and that action forced his body downward under power. I don’t know for sure if he caught it in the air or on the ground but catch it he did.<\/p>\n

Then\u00a0he fed it to one of his two offspring.<\/p>\n

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And this is that very beetle just a few seconds later being tossed into the air by one of the fledglings\u00a0before becoming bird food. If it was still alive that poor bug\u00a0but must have thought it was on a never-ending\u00a0roller coaster.<\/p>\n

Normally I’d be\u00a0reluctant to post images like some of these with so many obvious “issues” but I enjoyed\u00a0the behaviors\u00a0enough that I kept coming back to them so I thought some of my readers might get a kick out of them too.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

These photos aren’t high quality but I got a big kick out of them anyway.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50450,"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":[3,334,392,675],"tags":[31,683,2975,178,3482,677,676],"class_list":["post-50447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-western-kingbirds","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-beetle","tag-fledglings","tag-hunting","tag-throwing-food-in-the-air","tag-tyrannus-verticalus","tag-western-kingbird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/western-kingbird-9384-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-d7F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50447","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=50447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}