{"id":56832,"date":"2018-02-23T05:54:33","date_gmt":"2018-02-23T12:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=56832"},"modified":"2018-02-23T06:38:30","modified_gmt":"2018-02-23T13:38:30","slug":"one-angry-coot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/23\/one-angry-coot\/","title":{"rendered":"One Angry Coot"},"content":{"rendered":"

American Coots are among the\u00a0most belligerent birds in North America.<\/p>\n

Their pugnacious attitude provides the photographer with some wonderful opportunities but you have to be quick and capable of anticipating their behaviors to have any chance at success. Coots often fight and they regularly chase each other across the water but for a whole slew of reasons those chases are difficult to photograph well. But if we pay attention to behaviors we can often anticipate a chase and be ready for it and that’s a big part of the key to success.<\/p>\n

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\"\"1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 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

Two days ago I watched as this bird and another coot fed peacefully in the water right next to each other. Their behaviors suggested that they were probably a bonded pair so at first I didn’t anticipate\u00a0there would be any excitement involving either one of them. But then I noticed this bird lower its head and neck flat on the water and raise its stubby tail\u00a0into an aggressive posture so I looked to my left and spotted another coot approaching the pair. Figuring there might be a fight or at least a chase I had to\u00a0quickly choose one of the three coots to\u00a0train my lens on. This time I got lucky and\u00a0chose the right one.<\/p>\n

In a flash\u00a0the angry coot rose out of the water and started chasing the interloper. In most of my shots of the chase I was always trying to catch up with the\u00a0bird (they run very fast) so the\u00a0coot was usually\u00a0too close to the left edge of the frame for acceptable composition. But I do like this one because the composition works, I have pretty good detail, the bird is plenty sharp enough and I really like the running posture. In addition this is one of the few times I’ve noticed the alula on the wing of a coot.<\/p>\n

However I did have one dilemma with the image. There were gulls on the water behind the coot and the bright white reflection of one of them poked down into the frame at upper right. That reflection was terribly distracting so I was faced with the choice of living with it or cloning it out. As you can see I was seduced by the\u00a0clone tool. I don’t do that very often and when I\u00a0do I always\u00a0disclose\u00a0having done it but I still don’t feel very\u00a0good about it. But dammit that reflection was irritating!<\/p>\n

Lots of folks mostly ignore coots and I think that’s a mistake. If nothing else photographing their belligerent behaviors is a wonderful way for the photographer to improve his\/her skills.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

American Coots are among the most belligerent birds in North America and I love photographing their chases and fights.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56833,"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":[1051,6,334,16,394],"tags":[1052,2939,3869,865,139,1054],"class_list":["post-56832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-coots","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-photography-ethics","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","tag-american-coot","tag-anticipating-behavior","tag-chase","tag-cloning","tag-fight","tag-fulica-americana"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/american-coot-3569-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-eME","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56832","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=56832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}