{"id":53440,"date":"2017-11-11T05:22:15","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T12:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=53440"},"modified":"2017-11-11T05:55:18","modified_gmt":"2017-11-11T12:55:18","slug":"wild-turkey-in-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/11\/wild-turkey-in-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Wild Turkey In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The sights and sounds of Wild Turkeys in flight are truly\u00a0impressive.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"53442\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/11\/wild-turkey-in-flight\/wild-turkey-9982-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/wild-turkey-9982-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"900,643\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;6.3&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;RON DUDLEY&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;Canon EOS 7D&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1508576327&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;400&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;640&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.00025&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"wild turkey 9982 ron dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/wild-turkey-9982-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-53442 size-full\" title=\"wild-turkey-9982-ron-dudley\" src=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/wild-turkey-9982-ron-dudley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"643\" srcset=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/wild-turkey-9982-ron-dudley.jpg 900w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/wild-turkey-9982-ron-dudley-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/wild-turkey-9982-ron-dudley-768x549.jpg 768w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/wild-turkey-9982-ron-dudley-150x107.jpg 150w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/wild-turkey-9982-ron-dudley-400x286.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 400mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I photographed this turkey in a remote area of Box Elder County three weeks ago as its wingtips\u00a0barely cleared a strand of barbed wire on top of a fence. The original image was seriously underexposed so I had to bring it back up in Photoshop and\u00a0my heavy-handed processing shows but I find the photo interesting for several reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I rarely see photos of Wild Turkeys in flight so I&#8217;m happy to have this one despite its flaws.<\/li>\n<li>Male Wild Turkeys can weigh over 16 lbs. (males multiply their weight by approximately 120 times\u00a0during\u00a0their first year!) so seeing and hearing one in flight gets your attention. It takes a lot of energy, used efficiently, to get that much weight into the air quickly\u00a0so they have 18-19 very large secondaries (BNA Online refers to those secondaries as &#8220;ample&#8221;) to assist in that effort. I like this look at those flight feathers, both primaries and secondaries, because of their\u00a0contrasting patterns and colors even in this\u00a0light.<\/li>\n<li>Every time I see a large bird barely clearing barbed wire in flight like this I shudder and wonder how I&#8217;d ever get it off of the\u00a0wire if it became hung up on those nasty barbs. After\u00a0struggling to get both a Barn Owl and a Short-eared Owl off of barbed wire I always carry gloves and heavy-duty wire cutters in my pickup but I suspect that doing the same with an angry and scared bird this large would be quite an adventure. And then (speaking of adventures)\u00a0from this area there&#8217;s the 60 minute or longer drive to the rehab center in Ogden! I have to wonder if DaLyn, Buz and staff at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah have ever had to rehab a Wild Turkey. If so I&#8217;ll bet they could tell some stories&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We have two subspecies of Wild Turkeys here in Utah. Merriam&#8217;s turkeys are considered mountain birds and are often found in conifer forests at elevations of 7,000-11,000 ft. I strongly suspect this bird\u00a0to be\u00a0a Rio Grande turkey\u00a0because they prefer cottonwood river bottoms somewhat similar to the habitat near where I photographed this one.<\/p>\n<p>Ron<\/p>\n<p><em>PS &#8211; I keep thinking about that &#8220;multiply their weight by approximately 120 times in their first year&#8221; statistic. If a 7 lb. human newborn grew at that rate it would weigh 840 lbs. on its first birthday. Just imagine trying to keep that\u00a0kid in clothes. And shoes&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The sights and sounds of Wild Turkeys in flight are truly impressive.<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/11\/wild-turkey-in-flight\/\"><span>Continue reading<\/span><i class=\"crycon-right-dir\"><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53442,"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":[334,3664],"tags":[2455,2550,146,2744,3665,3666,2746,3373,2743,2209],"class_list":["post-53440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-wild-turkeys","tag-barbed-wire-fence","tag-box-elder-county-utah","tag-flight","tag-meleagris-gallopavo","tag-number-of-secondaries","tag-rehab","tag-rio-grande-turkey","tag-weight","tag-wild-turkey","tag-wildlife-rehabilitation-center-of-northern-utah"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/wild-turkey-9982-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-dTW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53440","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=53440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}