{"id":60541,"date":"2018-06-24T05:09:52","date_gmt":"2018-06-24T11:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=60541"},"modified":"2018-06-24T05:09:52","modified_gmt":"2018-06-24T11:09:52","slug":"red-naped-sapsucker-at-nest-cavity-with-food-for-hungry-chicks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/24\/red-naped-sapsucker-at-nest-cavity-with-food-for-hungry-chicks\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-naped Sapsucker At Nest Cavity With Food For Hungry Chicks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Including some closeup views of what’s on the menu.<\/p>\n

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1\/400, 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

I photographed this female (white chin with a complete black border around the red)\u00a0Red-naped Sapsucker three summers ago near the border of southwest Montana and Idaho. As you can see from my shutter speed and camera settings the light was very low so I got a bunch of soft shots but this one and a few others were sharp.<\/p>\n

She had a beak full of food for the chicks in the cavity and it appears to me to be insect pupae. I’ve photographed sapsuckers of several species feeding chicks many times\u00a0in the past and every time adult\u00a0black ants have been on the menu\u00a0so my first impulse\u00a0is to say these are ant pupae but to this non-entomologist they seem a little large for that.<\/p>\n

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I wanted a closer look so I cropped the previous photo heavily but that really didn’t tell me much, although I always appreciate a closer and\u00a0more detailed look into their private world.<\/p>\n

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I did the same thing to another photo of her looking the other way to see what was visible on the other side. All it told me was that she really had a mouthful and there may be more pupae inside her beak. In her eye reflection we see the trees and cloudy sky behind me.<\/p>\n

Today’s Red-naped Sapsucker, Red-breasted Sapsucker and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker were long considered the same species – the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. But systematic studies showed\u00a0significant distinctions between them (including mostly separate distributions)\u00a0so in 1983 they were\u00a0divided into separate species.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Including some closeup views of what’s on the menu.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60542,"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":[334,392,1493,391,1894],"tags":[4069,137,4070,649,1895,1896],"class_list":["post-60541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-naped-sapsuckers","tag-ant-pupae","tag-female","tag-history-of-sapsucker-taxonomy","tag-low-light","tag-red-naped-sapsucker","tag-sphyrapicus-nuchalis"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/red-naped-sapsucker-4835-big-crop-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-fKt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60541","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=60541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}