![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/belted-kingfisher-4560-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"belted-kingfisher-4560-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nI encounter a lot of very nice people through my bird photography but I meet my share of stinkers too. Be prepared, you won’t find a single quality image in today’s post – only a mediocre one and\u00a0a description of my encounter with\u00a0one of the rudest folks on the planet. And the first can be blamed on the second.<\/p>\n
Yesterday afternoon, after averaging 2-3 daily trips down to the Jordan River for the last month or\u00a0more\u00a0in\u00a0my stubborn\u00a0attempt to find “my” male Belted Kingfisher again (he no longer shows up at his previous favorite spot), I finally found him\u00a0once more. But please bear with me while I set the stage so you’ll better understand what\u00a0actually happened. It’s a fair amount of reading so if you don’t have the interest and\/or\u00a0endurance to get through it I understand and I hope to see you tomorrow but I have a rant within me that’s screaming to get out.<\/p>\n
I pulled up to the curb of a parking lot\u00a0adjacent to the river and there was a sidewalk between me and the river on my left (I was\u00a0shooting from my pickup of course). I knew there was a kingfisher buried in the trees on my side of the river because I’d heard him chattering at\u00a0me but at first I couldn’t see him so I located the best spot for light angle based on sound direction and parked.\u00a0As soon as I could look carefully I located him – he was\u00a0close but buried in the branches so I just waited to see what would happen. It was only 34\u00b0 F. so the parking lot was empty and almost no one was walking along the river so I was hopeful for some interesting shots of the kingfisher as he fished the river.<\/p>\n
But then along came a man (I’ll call him Roy for the sake of convenience)\u00a0on the sidewalk walking his small dog and about to walk by within just a few feet of my pickup on my left. I figured\u00a0Roy would\u00a0flush the kingfisher and he did, just before he and his little\u00a0dog\u00a0reached me.\u00a0And that’s\u00a0ok, it was bad timing but stuff like that happens in bird photography – especially in a semi-urban setting like the Jordan River Parkway. Sometimes I cuss when it happens but\u00a0up to this point it was\u00a0nobody’s fault.<\/p>\n
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1\/5000, f\/6.3, 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 When the kingfisher flushed he flew to the far side of the small\u00a0river and landed here – too far away and too buried in the branches for quality shots but I had a very good chance for flight and diving shots as he fished the river right below him. Roy had seen the kingfisher flush noisily and watched it land in this tree as he continued to\u00a0walk toward me and he also knew I was trying to photograph the bird (with my huge lens sticking out the window that was impossible to miss). I got my lens on the bird and had about a half-second to fire off four quick shots (this is one of them) before\u00a0Roy deliberately stopped between me and the\u00a0kingfisher, turned his back to me, and watched the bird in the tree. All I could see through my lens was\u00a0Roy’s\u00a0back.<\/p>\n Based on the chattering of the kingfisher when Roy stopped with his dog the bird obviously wasn’t happy with their presence so he flushed again and disappeared. I couldn’t see what direction he flew because Roy was so close to me (about\u00a08′)\u00a0he completely blocked my naked-eye view. When the kingfisher flew off\u00a0Roy turned and continued his walk with only a quick glance at me as he left, apparently to let me know that he’d accomplished his\u00a0goal of ruining my opportunity. And I was pissed!<\/p>\n I’m as sure that Roy did this deliberately as I am that the flat-earthers are wrong. The chance that he was just oblivious to the point of absurdity was\u00a0simply impossible and I think others would agree if they’d been there.<\/p>\n I’ve had similar experiences before. I once had a duck hunter in a diesel pickup\u00a0at Farmington pass me very slowly so he could see what I was aiming my big lens at – it was a “sticky” male American Kestrel quite close to me. When the hunter saw the kestrel and what I was doing he honked and gunned his noisy, stinky\u00a0engine and deliberately flushed my bird.<\/p>\n I’ll bet some of my bird photographer readers have similar stories. I’ll get over it but as I write this a few hours later\u00a0I’m still simmering. And disappointed in my species.<\/p>\n Apologies for the rant. I’ll get back to more familiar fare tomorrow. And yes, I feel (a little bit) better – catharsis is good for the soul…<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I encounter a lot of very nice people through my bird photography but I meet my share of stinkers too.<\/p>\n