![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/pine-siskin-4902-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"pine-siskin-4902-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nPlus a surprise visit from a mouse that turned out to be a moose.<\/p>\n
I always eagerly anticipate my first trip into the Uinta Mountains early each summer and yesterday I finally scratched that itch. The Uintas are the highest\u00a0mountain range in the contiguous\u00a0U.S. running east to west with Kings Peak being the highest point in\u00a0Utah at 13,528 feet. To me they have a unique feel about them when compared to the Wasatch Mountains immediately east of Salt\u00a0Lake City.<\/p>\n
And yesterday morning the birds in the Uintas were in a frenzy of nest-building.<\/p>\n
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1\/2000, 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 This Pine Siskin was gathering nesting material from the ground very close to my pickup. I’m not sure what it was picking up but it stuffed its beak with many short pieces of this thread-like material before eventually flying off. It almost looks like fishing line but it isn’t. I’m sure it’s a natural\u00a0material of some kind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/8000, f\/5, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n I spent much of the morning at a half-dead aspen tree that had\u00a03 nesting cavities. This one was being used by a pair of House Wrens\u00a0that were carrying nesting material into the cavity. For this shot I prefocused on the cavity entrance and then watched with my naked eye for one of the\u00a0wrens to fly in and then fired off a burst to see if I’d get lucky. Here I caught the wren at the moment of touch-down as it was carrying nesting material in its beak.<\/p>\n My camera settings may seem all wonky for the\u00a0conditions (and they were) but I was going back and forth between two photo situations with dramatically different lighting that was constantly changing\u00a0so\u00a0this was the result. One thing’s for sure – those little buzz saw wings have no motion blur at 1\/8000 sec shutter speed!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/8000, f\/5, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n At one point the wren arrived at the entrance with\u00a0a small yellow feather.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/8000, f\/5, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n It stuck its head into the cavity but then seemed to hesitate about taking it inside and eventually it flew off with the feather still in its beak. There were quite a few Yellow Warblers flitting around so I suspect one of them was the original owner of the feather.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/5, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Tree Swallows were busy at another cavity in the same tree but against that white aspen bark in direct sunlight\u00a0the dark dorsal\u00a0surfaces of the swallows were\u00a0an exposure nightmare because of the extreme contrast. I toned it down as much as I dared during processing but\u00a0I think it still\u00a0shows.<\/p>\n They would cling to the entrance with their back to me and then take off so damned fast that I mostly got\u00a0“air shots” but this time the swallow signaled its takeoff by raising its wings slightly for a split-second so I fired off a quick burst and…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/5, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n caught the swallow in a nice flight pose. Naturally, even with my teleconverter removed I clipped a wing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At one point I heard Mia (she was shooting from the back seat) quietly but excitedly say “Mouse, mouse!”. I had my lens focused on a bird at the time but we often try to photograph voles on the ground when we see them so I quickly looked down there to try to locate the mouse but I couldn’t\u00a0find it.<\/p>\n But very soon it became clear that I had misunderstood what she said. Instead of saying “Mouse, mouse” she had said…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n “Moose, moose!”. This bull moose was emerging from the willows quite close to my pickup. I quickly grabbed my “baby lens” because the moose was so close and fired off a few shots. Most of the time it had its head down while it was feeding but even when he lifted\u00a0his head\u00a0his right antler usually kept his eye in shade. This was\u00a0one of the few shots where I had any light in his eye.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Usually I couldn’t see the mechanics of him eating because his head was buried in vegetation but when he reached this small willow clump (the one immediately beneath his snout) he attempted to bite some of it off. I didn’t think much about it at the time but I did notice that he spent an unusual amount of time as he apparently tried to take a bite and in reviewing my images I don’t see that he was ever successful.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n A few seconds earlier I got several shots where he held his mouth widely open when he wasn’t trying to eat anything. The extreme angle of the\u00a0lower jaw seems unusual to me given that their mandible is long and straight and articulates with the rest of the skull behind the eye.\u00a0I have to wonder if his mandible\u00a0might have\u00a0been injured.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This moose skull shows the long straight mandible and where it articulates to the rest of the\u00a0skull. I’m not seeing how rigid bone would allow the mouth to be opened at that angle if there wasn’t some kind of injury – perhaps a broken jaw.<\/p>\n But I’m far\u00a0from a mammologist\u00a0and\u00a0I\u00a0know next to nothing about moose anatomy so I can only speculate. I wish I’d been able to see his snout while he was feeding (or attempting to feed) in the vegetation but except for that one time I never could.<\/p>\n I did see him with willow leaves in his mouth one time and in all other ways he seemed perfectly\u00a0healthy\u00a0so perhaps he’s just fine and I’m misinterpreting and overreacting. I sure hope so.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Plus a surprise visit from a mouse that turned out to be a moose.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/house-wren-4539-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"house-wren-4539-ron-dudley\\"")
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Copyright\u00a0Matthieu Deut\u00e9, Creative Commons<\/em><\/p>\n