{"id":5268,"date":"2012-04-22T18:59:41","date_gmt":"2012-04-23T00:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=5268"},"modified":"2012-04-22T19:05:59","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T01:05:59","slug":"the-timelessness-of-a-buffalo-chip-perch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/22\/the-timelessness-of-a-buffalo-chip-perch\/","title":{"rendered":"The Timelessness of a Buffalo Chip Perch"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American Bison is a relative newcomer to North America, having migrated from Eurasia over the Bering Straight about 10,000 years ago.\u00a0 As is common knowledge they once roamed in massive herds across most of the continent until commercial hunting and slaughter reduced their numbers to a few hundred by the end of the 19th century.<\/p>\n

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\"bison-3155\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4,\u00a01.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

Today a herd of approximately 500 animals roams free on Antelope Island and that many large animals produce a lot of poop – commonly referred to as “buffalo chips”.\u00a0 Those chips are all over the island – like small dark islands in a sea of prairie grasses and tiny\u00a0flowers and they’re tempting perches for a variety of bird species like Horned Larks and Meadowlarks.\u00a0 But this past week I was able to catch some larger birds using them as perches.<\/p>\n

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\"long-billed-curlew-1618\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4,\u00a01.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

In\u00a0the spring some of the shorebirds and wading birds come up from the shore of the Great Salt Lake to higher ground on the island for their breeding activities – Long-billed Curlews among them.\u00a0 It seems that the added height of only a couple of inches provided by the chip is enough to significantly improve their view of the landscape for potential predators and also to help them keep an eye on other curlews in the area – there’s a lot of fighting and mating activities going on this time of year.<\/p>\n

To some\u00a0viewers\u00a0such a perch may have no aesthetic\u00a0draw but I’m always struck by the timelessness of such a scene.\u00a0\u00a0For at least a\u00a0hundred centuries birds have been using these convenient and transient\u00a0perches on the North American plains and for me there’s a huge appeal for the naturalness of it all – the chip, the bird’s choice of perch, the flush of green\u00a0from the nutrients of the chip, the insects near\u00a0and on the chip that attract some birds –\u00a0I like it all.<\/p>\n

I’m also somewhat a student of the “old west”\u00a0and I like to ponder the past where Native Americans, trappers, pioneers, cowboys and even my own ancestors who helped to settle Utah back in 1850 would have watched birds perched on buffalo chips – to them at times it must have been a common occurrence but\u00a0today\u00a0I’m betting it’s something that\u00a0relatively few\u00a0Americans have ever\u00a0witnessed.<\/p>\n

Yes, I’m a bit of a romantic when it comes to the old west\u00a0but I just can’t help myself…<\/p>\n

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\"willet-3025\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/800, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4,\u00a01.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

Willets\u00a0also come up to higher elevations on the\u00a0island\u00a0for their\u00a0mating activities and they’ll also perch on the buffalo chips.\u00a0 Both species (Willets and curlews) will most often perch on larger rocks if they’re available but on many parts of the island they’re not so the chips are\u00a0apparently the next best thing.<\/p>\n

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

The American Bison is a relative newcomer to North America, having migrated from Eurasia over the Bering Straight about 10,000 years ago.\u00a0 As is common knowledge they once roamed in massive herds across most of the continent until commercial hunting and slaughter reduced their numbers to a few hundred by the end of the 19th century.   \u00a01\/500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4,\u00a01.4 tc Today a herd of approximately 500 animals roams free on Antelope Island and that many large animals produce a lot of poop – commonly referred to as “buffalo chips”.\u00a0 Those chips are all over the island – like small dark islands in a sea of prairie grasses and tiny\u00a0flowers and they’re tempting perches for a variety of bird species like Horned Larks and Meadowlarks.\u00a0 But this past week I was able to catch some larger birds using them as perches.     \u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4,\u00a01.4 tc In\u00a0the spring some of the shorebirds and wading birds come up from the shore of the Great Salt Lake to higher ground on the island for their breeding activities – Long-billed Curlews among them.\u00a0 It seems that the added height of only a couple of inches provided by the chip is enough to significantly improve their view of the landscape for potential predators and also to help them keep an eye on other curlews in the area – there’s a lot of fighting and mating activities going on this time of year. To some\u00a0viewers\u00a0such a perch may have no aesthetic\u00a0draw but I’m…<\/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":[3,4,334,347,9,369,13,395,368,21,343],"tags":[56,61,693,208,695,549,327],"class_list":["post-5268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-bison-mammals","category-favorite-locations","category-long-billed-curlews","category-mammals","category-miscellaneous","category-shore-birds","category-wading-birds","category-willets","tag-bison","tag-buffalo","tag-buffalo-chip","tag-long-billed-curlew","tag-old-west","tag-perch","tag-willet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-1mY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5268","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=5268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}