{"id":56977,"date":"2018-03-02T05:57:07","date_gmt":"2018-03-02T12:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=56977"},"modified":"2018-03-02T07:28:49","modified_gmt":"2018-03-02T14:28:49","slug":"male-western-kingbird-rushing-to-meet-an-intruder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/02\/male-western-kingbird-rushing-to-meet-an-intruder\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Western Kingbird Rushing To Meet An Intruder"},"content":{"rendered":"

A glimmer of springtime before a winter blizzard.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the male of a mated pair of Western Kingbirds I photographed in May several years ago on Antelope Island. Kingbirds are extremely defensive of their breeding territories (thus the name “kingbird”)\u00a0during nesting season and this one endlessly stood guard as the female constructed their nearby nest. They will mob or attack\u00a0any\u00a0intruder and this male often did just that. Here he has just taken off from his sagebrush sentry post at right and you’ll notice that he has his eye to the sky. It’s likely that he’s spotted some\u00a0approaching bird and is rushing to meet the potential threat although\u00a0at this point I can’t remember what it was.<\/p>\n

I like the flight posture,\u00a0his hanging legs and feet, the clean green background, the sharpness of the bird and his eye to the sky.<\/p>\n

I’ve never posted this image in the past\u00a0because the bird was just a little too close to the left frame edge to give me a composition I liked. But when I stumbled across it again last night and noticed him looking skyward (something that had escaped me previously) I decided to bite the bullet and add canvas on the left.<\/p>\n

A little thing like that skyward glance pushed me over the edge…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: When I was previewing images to post last night I deliberately looked for thumbnails that had some green in them. We still have lots of snow on the ground and they’re forecasting strong winds and up to another 8″ of\u00a0solid water\u00a0over the next couple of days in the northern Utah valleys (1-2 ft. in the mountains). Green is looking better and better to me as time goes by.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

A glimmer of springtime before a winter blizzard.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56978,"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":[3,334,391,675],"tags":[31,146,211,230,677,676],"class_list":["post-56977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-western-kingbirds","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-flight","tag-male","tag-nesting","tag-tyrannus-verticalus","tag-western-kingbird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/western-kingbird-3418-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-eOZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56977","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=56977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}