{"id":60376,"date":"2018-06-20T05:03:38","date_gmt":"2018-06-20T11:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=60376"},"modified":"2018-06-20T05:39:49","modified_gmt":"2018-06-20T11:39:49","slug":"nine-recent-birds-nine-different-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/20\/nine-recent-birds-nine-different-species\/","title":{"rendered":"Nine Recent Birds, Nine Different Species"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s post is an\u00a0avian potpourri.<\/p>\n

All 9 of the following\u00a0photos were taken in the last 16 days.\u00a0There isn’t a great shot among them\u00a0but I think there’s at least\u00a0something of\u00a0interest in each one. Sorry, but once again I didn’t have time to include image techs.<\/p>\n

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I don’t think I’ll be taking many more Chukar photos until this fall. This Chukar\u00a0yesterday morning on Antelope Island was looking pretty ragged because it has already started “wearing to dark<\/a>” (follow the link if you’d like that process explained, including examples). Until recently they were still looking fresh and\u00a0handsome but in this bird\u00a0you can see the changes in some of the feathers wearing and\u00a0turning dark, especially on the head, lower neck and upper breast. They just won’t be very attractive for a few months.<\/p>\n

Soon after sunup this bird was still sleepy and it could barely keep its eyes open.<\/p>\n

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This loggerhead shrike photo, also taken\u00a0yesterday morning, had the potential to be a\u00a0better image if the bird had\u00a0looked more toward me but it was sidelit so if it had looked more my way the face would have been shaded with no catch light in the eye. With the good detail,\u00a0attractive perch and the Great Salt Lake in the upper background I still think it’s an interesting shot.<\/p>\n

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Just a male Mountain Bluebird on a stick, also sidelit. But who doesn’t like bluebirds? This guy and his mate are feeding fledglings right now.<\/p>\n

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This photo amuses me even though it was an exposure nightmare. The sign the Short-eared Owl was perched on was painted a shiny brown\u00a0so the morning\u00a0sun was glaring off of it and making it\u00a0extremely bright. I played with selective exposure adjustment during processing as much as I dared but the owl is still a little\u00a0too dark.<\/p>\n

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I’ve been watching this nest for years now and it produces a lot of Red-tailed Hawk fledglings. Their brood this year seems to be thriving. Because of its location on the side of a cliff the light on the nest and rocks is always extremely contrasty (when there’s any light at all) so the only photos I take of the chicks are so I can monitor their growth and well-being.<\/p>\n

The female parent of these chicks is probably the most gorgeous dark red Red-tailed Hawk I’ve ever seen so I’m curious to know what these birds will eventually look like in their adult plumage.<\/p>\n

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A male Broad-tailed Hummingbird surveying his kingdom in the Wasatch Mountains. His gorget was nothing short of spectacular when he was looking directly at me but then we couldn’t see his eyes so I chose this image to post because it shows at least some of that beautiful iridescent color.<\/p>\n

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A Cedar Waxwing launching from its perch in\u00a0the dead portion of an otherwise thriving hawthorn tree in a lush mountain valley. The waxwings are nesting in the living part of the tree, probably at least in part because of something we can see in both this image and the next –<\/p>\n

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those fearsome-looking hawthorn thorns. This Yellow Warbler was in the same dead part of the tree. I imagine most predators would think twice before\u00a0attempting to raid that waxwing nest.<\/p>\n

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I’ll conclude with a Turkey Vulture in flight. The bird had just taken off from the fence\u00a0post at lower left but I’m glad there’s not much of it in the image because in order\u00a0to get the almost black vulture exposed properly I had to overexpose the sun-bleached post.<\/p>\n

As I said there isn’t a great shot in the bunch but I hope you enjoyed the variety and found something of interest in at least a few of them.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Today’s post is an avian potpourri.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60384,"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":[334,2659,352,1678,346,450,356,3486],"tags":[2202,1651,82,206,741,4063,279,911,311,2588],"class_list":["post-60376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-cedar-waxwings","category-chukars","category-hummingbirds","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","category-red-tailed-hawks","category-short-eared-owls","category-yellow-warbler","tag-broad-tailed-hummingbird","tag-cedar-waxwing","tag-chukar","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-mountain-bluebird","tag-red-tailed-hawk-chicks","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-turkey-vulture","tag-utah-2","tag-yellow-warbler"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/turkey-vulture-9859-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-fHO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60376","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=60376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}