{"id":60449,"date":"2018-06-22T04:26:12","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T10:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=60449"},"modified":"2018-06-22T06:21:30","modified_gmt":"2018-06-22T12:21:30","slug":"male-mountain-bluebird-and-fledglings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/22\/male-mountain-bluebird-and-fledglings\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Mountain Bluebird And Fledglings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cornell’s Birds of North America Online calls Mountain Bluebirds one of the most sublime songbirds in North America and I agree. The cerulean blue\u00a0of the male is simply spectacular and females and juveniles show\u00a0some of it too.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/7.1, 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

Yesterday morning in the Wasatch Mountains this\u00a0beautiful male was hunting insects for at least four fledglings and he and his mate have been doing it for about a week now. The fledglings are\u00a0beginning to find\u00a0some of their own food\u00a0but they’re still not fully\u00a0independent.\u00a0He landed on and hunted from a variety of perches as he looked for bugs. He was a relentless hunter as he provided for his offspring.<\/p>\n

Mountain Bluebirds have\u00a0been referred to as scaled-down versions of American Kestrels in their behavioral ecology and I can see why.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, 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

Once he\u00a0landed so close to me that I had to shoot vertically to keep all of him comfortably in frame. I despise<\/em> shooting vertically with my big lens because it’s so awkward and difficult to actually find the bird in the viewfinder but he gave me no practical choice.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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

A few times he even landed on more attractive perches.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, 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

While perched here he cocked his head a little\u00a0toward the sky, probably because he saw another bird in flight and needed to confirm it wasn’t an incoming predator. That’s something I see constantly with birds as they watch for potential threats.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, 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 fledgling had landed on the road to look for insects. Insects are attracted to the road, presumably for its warmth, and these birds hunted there more often than anywhere else. I was happy to catch this one at liftoff with a nice wing position,\u00a0head turn and push-off posture.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, 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

Once the same fledgling did a strange twitchy thing with its wings but it didn’t take off then. It might have been\u00a0part of a\u00a0begging behavior directed at a nearby parent that I didn’t see.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/7.1, 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

There were several old and rusty fence-like structures made of heavy pipe in the area and they were favorite perches of both youngsters and adults. These two fledglings were already there when the male landed next to them. He didn’t have any food…<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/9, 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

but one of the youngsters begged obnoxiously anyway. His reaction was to try to back away but he ran out of room on the pipe\u00a0behind him\u00a0so he…<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/9, 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

got the hell out of Dodge.<\/p>\n

For\u00a0these last 3 photos I went to f\/9 in an effort to\u00a0have enough depth of field for all 3 birds but that made my shutter speed marginal for shots like this one. Photography is always a series of compromises.<\/p>\n

Some of my readers occasionally chide me\u00a0gently for my dislike of the “hand of man” in my images but this pipe is rusty and old and I don’t mind it at all. The older I get the more I think that “character” comes with age and that includes man-made perches.\u00a0Besides, we can see all\u00a03 birds much better on this pipe\u00a0than we likely could if they had been in a tree or bush.<\/p>\n

See, there’s hope for me yet…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Cornell’s Birds of North America Online calls Mountain Bluebirds one of the most sublime songbirds in North America and I agree. The cerulean blue of the male is simply spectacular and females and juveniles show some of it too.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60456,"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":[334,1504,391],"tags":[2975,741,1505,311],"class_list":["post-60449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-mountain-bluebirds","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-fledglings","tag-mountain-bluebird","tag-sialia-currocoides","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/mountain-bluebird-4733-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-fIZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60449","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=60449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}