{"id":53080,"date":"2017-10-30T04:42:16","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T10:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=53080"},"modified":"2017-10-30T04:56:35","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T10:56:35","slug":"blue-gray-gnatcatchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/30\/blue-gray-gnatcatchers\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue-gray Gnatcatchers"},"content":{"rendered":"

This species is the only truly migratory gnatcatcher so I expected ours to be gone by now but yesterday morning they were still around in good numbers.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/6.3, 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

As is their habit they were actively gleaning tiny insects from foliage – in this case mostly scrub oak in Box Elder County. They’re active and fast so they’re difficult to photograph well but I managed to get some shots I enjoy (despite the fact that some of these photos aren’t\u00a0as sharp as I like).<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, 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

Blue-gray Gnatcatchers are very small, long-tailed songbirds whose tails\u00a0are almost as long as the rest of\u00a0their body (the softness of the face of this bird grates on my sensibilities\u00a0but I wanted to include this look at the tail).<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/5.6, 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

This one landed for a moment in a far-off wild rose bush and the morning light brought out those reds gloriously so even though the bird is small in the\u00a0frame I’m fine with it because for my tastes the leaves and their colors are\u00a0almost as important as the bird. And I like the way the heavily shaded background sets it all off.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 840, 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

Though this\u00a0photo may seem a little strange to some I think it’s my favorite gnatcatcher shot of the morning. This bird is actually\u00a0in full flight (its feet aren’t even particularly\u00a0close to the\u00a0branch that had been the perch) and I like the almost ruler-straight tops of\u00a0both wings accentuated by the shadow going across the lower neck that seems to extend that graphic line from wing to wing.<\/p>\n

Getting this little speed demon reasonably sharp “in flight” pleased me and I also like the way its body is hanging\u00a0nearly straight down\u00a0from the\u00a0wings, almost like it’s suspended\u00a0from them (which in reality it is – this flight posture just makes that fact more apparent).<\/p>\n

It was fun to get one last chance with this species before they leave for the winter. The reports I read on Birds of North America Online about the usual\u00a0timing of their fall migration (“in autumn appear to depart breeding areas as soon as young are independent, mid- to late August<\/em>“)\u00a0strongly suggest that these particular\u00a0gnatcatchers are quite\u00a0late migrating this year\u00a0so I can’t help but wonder if it’s yet another\u00a0potentially dire result\u00a0of climate change.<\/p>\n

If so, who knows what the long-term effects on the species might be.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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This species is the only truly migratory gnatcatcher so I expected ours to be gone by now but yesterday morning they were still around in good numbers.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53083,"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":[334],"tags":[3581,689,1641,146,3635,3580],"class_list":["post-53080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","tag-blue-gray-gnatcatcher","tag-box-elder-county","tag-climate-change","tag-flight","tag-late-migration","tag-polioptila-caerulea"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/blue-gray-gnatcatcher-0629-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-dO8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53080","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=53080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}