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<\/p>\nGeez, what some birds will do just to get at a sweet and juicy berry.<\/p>\n
Yesterday morning I finally got out and found a few birds.\u00a0For some time now it’s\u00a0been so damned smoky around\u00a0here the effort hasn’t been worth it but we had slightly clearer air in the valley and it was even better in the mountains (it isn’t always that way\u00a0so you just have to make the trip to find out). As long as\u00a0I’m close to\u00a0my subject in those conditions I think the\u00a0smoke is undetectable in my images.<\/p>\n
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1\/4000, f\/6.3. ISO 1250, 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 believe this is a juvenile Song Sparrow. I’m not great at sparrow ID to begin with and the fact that it’s a juvie makes it even more difficult for me so please correct me if I’m wrong.<\/p>\n This particular Utah\u00a0Serviceberry bush was loaded with berries and most of them were ripe and sweet so over a period of about an hour\u00a0several species came in for breakfast.\u00a0The bush is\u00a0close to a mountain to the east so it took the sun a very long time to reach it and as you’ll likely see in some future posts I was shooting birds in the shade most of the time. But only moments before these shots were taken light finally reached the bush.<\/p>\n At first the sparrow was further to the right on the\u00a0branch but it had its eye on those ripe berries at the bottom of the frame so it moved over into position to see if it could reach them from the perch. This is one of only two shots I got with a\u00a0reasonably good side view of the bird.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2500, f\/6.3. ISO 1250, 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 The sparrow was successful in reaching its\u00a0goal but it took\u00a0considerable effort and agility. The berries are too big for them to swallow whole so the bird just repeatedly\u00a0reached\u00a0down and picked pieces off and slurped juice. You can see where it already took a bite out of the berry in front.\u00a0Normally I could only see the back of its head during the process but I took a lot of bursts in the hope I’d get a turn of the head with a catch light in the eye. Thankfully I got a few but not very many considering how many photos I took.<\/p>\n At first I couldn’t decide how to compose this shot when I cropped it so I worked up two versions – this horizontal…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n and a vertical. After thinking about it I’ve decided I prefer the vertical version, for its mimicry of the vertical pose of the sparrow and for the better detail and closer look we get of the feeding behavior of the bird.<\/p>\n But I suspect opinions\u00a0might vary, they nearly always do.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Geez, what some birds will do just to get at a sweet and juicy berry.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/song-sparrow-7958b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"song-sparrow-7958b-ron-dudley\\"")
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