{"id":52937,"date":"2017-10-26T06:29:52","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T12:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=52937"},"modified":"2017-10-26T18:36:17","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T00:36:17","slug":"a-kingfisher-and-a-cop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/26\/a-kingfisher-and-a-cop\/","title":{"rendered":"A Kingfisher And….. A Cop"},"content":{"rendered":"

After so many kingfisher posts recently it was my intention to post a different species today. However, events of yesterday warranted otherwise.\u00a0Those events\u00a0include “my” male Belted Kingfisher being cooperative again,\u00a0several fascinating kingfisher behaviors and an unexpected and potentially very\u00a0unpleasant\u00a0encounter with a local cop.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/7.1, ISO 640, 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

Yesterday I couldn’t believe my luck when “my” male Belted Kingfisher showed up in his favorite fishing tree\u00a0less than a minute after I had situated myself in my pickup to get a good angle on him. Readers may be interested in knowing that this time I used a different strategy so I wouldn’t put so much stress on my bad back to get that angle on him and it worked, resulting in\u00a0no additional damage to my back muscles and nerves. Within a short time he even\u00a0chose another close and exposed\u00a0perch and posed for me for a while before turning his back on me and resuming his fishing activities.<\/p>\n

Then the first bit of excitement. Suddenly\u00a0a second, very angry\u00a0kingfisher flew in\u00a0(possibly a female because I thought I saw a\u00a0quick flash of red)\u00a0and after a\u00a0brief but intense and very loud\u00a0session of aerial combat one bird chased the other one\u00a0off and I wondered if either would return. About 10 minutes later the male did come back, apparently as the victor.<\/p>\n

After I got home I did a bit of research. According to Birds of North America Online non-migratory males (many of our male\u00a0kingfishers do not migrate) aggressively defend their\u00a0fishing territory during the non-breeding season. I’m thinking that’s what happened in this case.<\/p>\n

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Some time later I photographed some quirky behavior that confused me at first, both as a photographer and as someone interested in bird behaviors. Many of my photos documenting it are of very poor quality because of the distance involved, the\u00a0unexpected direction of flight the kingfisher took and the fact that my focus points grabbed onto obstructions in front of the bird. This resulted in\u00a0a very soft\u00a0and\/or cut off kingfisher but I still think some of the photos document the behavior.<\/p>\n

Here the kingfisher is gobbling down a fish (another weather loach) on his favorite feeding platform. He was far away and he had his back to me so my greatest interest in him at this point was\u00a0trying to get\u00a0takeoff and flight shots as he returned to one of his several overhead fishing branches. Keep in mind that this perch is less than 2′ above the water.<\/p>\n

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He turned on the perch which possibly gave me a great angle on him as he took off toward one of those branches far above him. But he fooled both me and my camera by…<\/p>\n

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plunging almost straight down into the water. There were other branches in the water that obstructed my view of what he was doing down there but I assumed he’d gone after a fish he’d spotted, even though I’d never seen him fish from there before.\u00a0That seemed logical because this\u00a0very low perch would provide him a poor angle to scan much of the water effectively\u00a0for fish.<\/p>\n

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In about two seconds he returned to the same perch (without a fish)…<\/p>\n

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and a few seconds later he did the same thing again – here he’s returning to the low perch a second time.<\/p>\n

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Then he did it a third time. When\u00a0kingfishers dive after fish I’ve estimated that they only spend about 1 second in the water but each of these 3 times he spent slightly more time than that\u00a0in the water – perhaps\u00a0just over 2 seconds. At this point I figured something else might be going on and I wondered if it might be a unique form of kingfisher bathing.<\/p>\n

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It turns out that’s exactly<\/em> what he was doing. After the third dive (and not after the first two) he spent several minutes shaking water off his feathers and preening on the perch.<\/p>\n

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He spent an inordinate amount of time trying to reach his belly and breast feathers with that long bill.<\/p>\n

Research after I got home confirmed that many kingfisher species bathe by first repeatedly diving into the water and then preening and sunning on a convenient perch. This was the first time I’d ever seen a kingfisher bathe so\u00a0at first I was a little\u00a0confused by his slightly unconventional methodology. I guess I had\u00a0just assumed that kingfishers accomplish effective bathing each time they dive for a fish but come to think of it I’ve often seen them come\u00a0out of the water\u00a0with muddy bills and\/or pond scum clinging to them.<\/p>\n

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I didn’t know it at the time but soon after these photos were taken my kingfisher photography was doomed for the day by an event that scared off my bird. I had my lens sticking out the passenger window of my pickup when a local Murray City police officer stuck his head in my already open driver’s side window and asked me what I was doing.<\/p>\n

It turns out that someone in the neighborhood had reported me for “taking pictures of children playing in the nearby park with my\u00a0big lens”. After a brief (but tense on my part) conversation that included me explaining what I was doing, giving him one of my bird photography business cards, showing him one of my kingfisher photos on the screen of my camera and him taking my driver’s license so he could go back to his squad car and run me for warrants he wished me a good day and went on his way.<\/p>\n

I very much appreciated the fact that he was professional, courteous and\u00a0eventually even friendly. I wish I’d\u00a0had the presence of mind to read his assumed name tag so I could mention his name here and congratulate him publicly for the completely professional and\u00a0appropriate\u00a0way he handled the situation. And I hold no grudges against the neighbor who reported me (I’d met two of the neighbors previously and one of them even came\u00a0out front\u00a0to support me while the officer was there). In these days of pervasive perverts and psychopathic\u00a0sickos I’m afraid we must be extra vigilant, especially with our children.<\/p>\n

I just wish that all such encounters between police officers and innocent citizens turned out so well. And I’m confident that most cops feel the same way (I know how I feel as a retired teacher whenever I hear about a teacher who has taken unprofessional, immoral and\/or illegal advantage of his or her position of authority\u00a0over a student).<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

After so many kingfisher posts recently it was my intention to post a different species today. However, events of yesterday warranted otherwise. Those events include “my” male Belted Kingfisher being cooperative again, several fascinating kingfisher behaviors and an unexpected and potentially very unpleasant encounter with a local cop..<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52938,"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":[393,2853,6,334,16,392,394],"tags":[3629,2329,3385,140,141,3630,3631,3632,612,320],"class_list":["post-52937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bathing-bird-behaviors","category-belted-kingfishers","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-photography-ethics","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","tag-bathing-technique","tag-belted-kingfisher","tag-ceryle-alcyon","tag-fighting","tag-fish","tag-murray-city-police","tag-perverts","tag-taking-pictures-of-children","tag-unusual-behavior","tag-weather-loach"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/belted-kingfisher-9316-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-dLP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52937","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=52937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}