{"id":59875,"date":"2018-06-06T05:13:40","date_gmt":"2018-06-06T11:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=59875"},"modified":"2018-06-06T08:23:48","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T14:23:48","slug":"bullocks-oriole-attacking-his-own-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/06\/bullocks-oriole-attacking-his-own-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"Bullock’s Oriole Attacking His Own Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"

This beautiful male was really feeling his oats.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I spent the morning on Antelope Island. I found a few cooperative birds but this male Bullock’s Oriole demonstrated a behavior I’d never\u00a0photographed before. I’d seen video clips on social media\u00a0of\u00a0other species doing it and I’ve seen a couple of birds doing something similar but I was never able to document it with photos. So despite the fact that many of\u00a0these images are only of documentary quality this bird definitely made my day.<\/p>\n

First let me set the stage.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I was looking for birds at Bridger Bay Campground when I noticed\u00a0a male Bullock’s Oriole perched\u00a0on the driver’s side mirror of this rental RV in one of the campsites. In order to get good light on the bird I had to pass fairly close to the RV and turn around\u00a0and by the time I did\u00a0he had moved to the passenger side mirror where you see him here.<\/p>\n

The curtains were closed on the RV so I’m sure the occupants were still asleep (it was 7:13 AM). I never did see any signs of life inside the camper.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This bird was full of piss and vinegar.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He kept trying to look at\u00a0“that other bird”\u00a0in the mirror from on top of it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I mean he really tried!<\/p>\n

Obviously he thought his reflection in the mirror was another male oriole and during breeding season he wasn’t happy about\u00a0having the interloper around.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But his most common behavior was jumping down from the mirror\u00a0(he really never flew when he did this because he\u00a0never opened his wings)…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

and disappearing behind the passenger door and windshield of the RV. I couldn’t see where he\u00a0was landing but within just a few seconds he always flew back to the mirror from the same spot where he had\u00a0disappeared. He did this exact same\u00a0thing dozens of times while I was there.<\/p>\n

This pattern kept repeating itself\u00a0so I kept getting the same kinds of shots and the damned biting gnats were eating me alive so I decided to leave the oriole and go elsewhere on the island to look for more birds and escape the gnats.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But 30 minutes later I returned to the campground and found him on the windshield wiper of the RV. I suspect he could also see his reflection in the windshield.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But almost immediately he returned to his old antics of jumping down from the mirror…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

and disappearing behind the windshield and door but I was finally able to figure out where he always went when he did this.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I’m sure he had been landing on the small ledge where the bottom of the window meets the door. From there he could probably see himself in the very large\u00a0mirror. He would always stay there for a few seconds and then fly back to the mirror from the same spot on the door. He could probably see himself in flight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Occasionally he’d attack his reflection directly but he didn’t do this very often and when he did he was always in shade.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Once when he bent over to look at his reflection he leaned\u00a0over too far and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

nearly fell off the mirror so he had to regain his balance by\u00a0using his wings.<\/p>\n

At this point I left the campground but later I came back a third time and he was still attacking his reflection – this time in both mirrors. But as I was turning my\u00a0pickup\u00a0around he flew off and it was getting late in the morning so I headed for home.<\/p>\n

This guy really had an attitude. Once I saw a Loggerhead Shrike fly into one of the nearby\u00a0trees behind the camper and in a flash the oriole was on the attack. He chased the shrike around the tree twice before the shrike turned tail and\u00a0flew off.<\/p>\n

Shrikes often kill and eat other songbirds so most passerines don’t mess with them but this feisty oriole was taking no prisoners.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

This beautiful male was really feeling his oats.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59888,"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":[3,334,3451,394],"tags":[31,4045,2026,2551,2999,211,311],"class_list":["post-59875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-bullocks-orioles","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-attacking-reflection","tag-biting-gnats","tag-bullocks-oriole","tag-icterus-bullockii","tag-male","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/bullocks-oriole-6306-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-fzJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59875","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=59875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}