{"id":51896,"date":"2017-09-22T05:55:07","date_gmt":"2017-09-22T11:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=51896"},"modified":"2017-09-22T10:10:43","modified_gmt":"2017-09-22T16:10:43","slug":"a-female-belted-kingfisher-and-nictitating-membranes-in-my-photos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/09\/22\/a-female-belted-kingfisher-and-nictitating-membranes-in-my-photos\/","title":{"rendered":"A Female Belted Kingfisher (and nictitating membranes in my photos)"},"content":{"rendered":"

And this time she has a fish.<\/p>\n

Many readers will remember this female Belted Kingfisher I photographed\u00a0multiple times in\u00a0various settings back\u00a0in February of 2016 at a local pond near my home because I’ve posted several images of her in this setting\u00a0before. But these photos are new to my blog.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 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 caught an invasive weather loach in the pond and then she\u00a0considerately brought it to a perch close to me to work it over before swallowing it (the wet spots on the perch below her bill are where she’d slammed the fish against the branch\u00a0to stun it). The setting is busy but I have good detail on both bird and loach and in this shot I caught the fish in a clear spot between blurry twigs in the background.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 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

The loach is so long-bodied she had a difficult time getting it down. The tail was still flailing and there was danger of it striking her eye so she closed her nictitating membrane for protection\u00a0during the process.<\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking about something lately. In the past I’ve always been quite\u00a0reluctant to post bird photos where the membrane is\u00a0visible because it looks so bizarre to some folks, especially when it’s as opaque as those in kingfishers.\u00a0I shouldn’t have been. After all, two of the primary\u00a0focuses of my blog are bird biology and behaviors and the membrane involves both.\u00a0So I’ve decided that in the future I won’t be so\u00a0hesitant to post images where the membrane can be seen.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I’m a slow learner but after many years of bird photography and blogging I finally realized that what I was (not) doing was illogical considering my style and continuing\u00a0interests.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

And this time she has a fish.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51897,"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":[2853,334,392],"tags":[2329,3385,515,3569,311,320],"class_list":["post-51896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belted-kingfishers","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-belted-kingfisher","tag-ceryle-alcyon","tag-nictitating-membrane","tag-swallowing-a-fish","tag-utah-2","tag-weather-loach"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/belted-kingfisher-2843-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-dv2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51896","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=51896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}