{"id":51538,"date":"2017-09-10T05:27:52","date_gmt":"2017-09-10T11:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=51538"},"modified":"2017-09-10T05:39:24","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T11:39:24","slug":"weathering-the-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/09\/10\/weathering-the-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"Weathering The Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Current events in Florida have me thinking about storms and survival for both humans and birds.<\/p>\n

In July of 2011 I experienced a hailstorm at Montana’s\u00a0Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge that I won’t soon forget, largely for its impact on birds but it was very impressive on its own merits. I’ve posted about this event previously but all but one of these images is new to my blog.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I was sitting in my pickup\u00a0at Lower Red Rock Lake photographing\u00a0avocets and phalaropes\u00a0when I noticed a very dark storm approaching from the west.\u00a0When it arrived it started out as rain but over the next 75 minutes it turned to hail several times. This photo was taken at only 41mm but I’d been photographing the American\u00a0Avocets you\u00a0(barely) see at left-center of the shore with my 500mm lens.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The first wave of hail was fairly brief and for a short time the sun actually came out and produced a rainbow but the reprieve from the storm was only the calm in the\u00a0“eye of the hurricane”. To give you a perspective of where I often camp while I’m at the refuge, that larger white object next to the two old outhouses in the far distance\u00a0is my camping trailer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The next wave of hail arrived with a fury. Here we see impact spouts on the water and the avocets were obviously terrified. They alternately took to the air and flew in tight circles…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

and landed to hunker down. I think they realized on some level that\u00a0there was nothing they could do to escape the stinging hail so they just endured it. Many much smaller Wilson’s Phalaropes took cover in the grasses behind them (they’re in there, we just can’t see them) but apparently it wasn’t an effective strategy\u00a0for\u00a0the much larger avocets with their very long legs.<\/p>\n

They stood in the pummeling hail with no place to go to escape it for what seemed like an eternity. My empathy for them was intense, especially since inside my pickup\u00a0the hail sounded like Armageddon. But as far as I could tell there were no serious injuries\u00a0and when the hail eventually…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

turned to only\u00a0rain the avocets began to almost jauntily return to the water. Their body language and general demeanor seemed to suggest they were celebrating their survival.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Then they took to the air while it was still raining…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

and continued the celebration by flying in a flock in tight circles for some time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Here we see them in flight in\u00a0the far distance seeming to revel in\u00a0another rainbow and their good fortune.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Even the phalaropes came out of their sanctuary in the grasses and joined in the fun with the rainbow behind them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My\u00a0thoughts turned to this storm because of hurricane Irma and the devastation she’s wreaking on Florida and Floridians\u00a0as I type this. Personally I’ve never experienced a hurricane but I’ve endured hurricane-force winds\u00a0many times. I grew up in Cut Bank, Montana where 100+ mph winds aren’t all that unusual. Nearby Heart Butte has recorded winds of 133 mph and the state record for wind speed, 143 mph,\u00a0occurred near Choteau which isn’t too far from Cut Bank.<\/p>\n

During one of our incredible wind events in Cut Bank when I was a youngster I remember\u00a0thinking the end of the world had come but of course there’s no comparison to Irma and what Floridians are enduring right now. We had no storm surge and when it was over it was over. Relatively little damage had been done and we just went on with our lives.<\/p>\n

After Irma many\u00a0will be trying to rebuild their lives for years and others will likely perish in the storm. And I suspect there will be unforeseen and tragic\u00a0consequences, possibly for decades (I can’t help\u00a0but worry\u00a0about all those nuclear power plants in the state).<\/p>\n

My heart aches for Floridians and others in Irma’s path. May there be rainbows in their future…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Current events in Florida have me thinking about storms and survival for both humans and birds.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51541,"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":[437,334,395,360],"tags":[3553,103,2874,3552,220,3554,436,471,263,1764,3555],"class_list":["post-51538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-avocets-shore-birds","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","tag-american-avocets","tag-cut-bank-montana","tag-hailstorm","tag-hurricane-irma","tag-montana-2","tag-phalaropes","tag-rainbow","tag-recurvirostra-americana","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-storm","tag-winds"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/american-avocet-5083-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-dpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51538","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=51538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}