{"id":62243,"date":"2018-08-13T04:53:12","date_gmt":"2018-08-13T10:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=62243"},"modified":"2018-08-13T05:46:10","modified_gmt":"2018-08-13T11:46:10","slug":"juvenile-black-capped-chickadees-in-a-feeding-frenzy-on-mullein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/13\/juvenile-black-capped-chickadees-in-a-feeding-frenzy-on-mullein\/","title":{"rendered":"Juvenile Black-capped Chickadees In A Feeding Frenzy On Mullein"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the western US common mullein is often referred to as “cowboy toilet paper” but chickadees use it for food. These two youngsters may have been siblings but that doesn’t mean they had to be friendly over their breakfast.<\/p>\n

Photos taken four days ago in the Wasatch Mountains.<\/em><\/p>\n

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1\/3200, 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

This crappy photo is the only one I\u00a0have to show their actual\u00a0competition\u00a0for the mullein they were\u00a0squabbling over\u00a0because both birds were never on the seed head at the same time. One would feed furiously for a few seconds and then the other one would chase it off and take its place. It was literally a two bird feeding frenzy for quite a while.<\/p>\n

It was tough shooting for me though because I had to thread the needle with my lens\u00a0– there was obstructing foreground vegetation on both sides of the mullein so I didn’t have much space to work with.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, 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

Because they were recently fledged their\u00a0plumage looked like the birds had\u00a0been standing\u00a0in front of a hair dryer blowing the wrong way against their feathers and as a result they looked a little “rough”.<\/p>\n

Birds of North America Online says that chickadee down feathers as nestlings “persist and are pushed out by, and remain attached to, the juvenile feathers until worn away after the bird leaves the nest”. That explains their “rough” look at this young age\u00a0and I think the explanation is pretty interesting. Some of the remnant\u00a0down feathers can still be seen in this and other photos.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, 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

In the short time they always had on the mullein they were concentrating on their eating with their\u00a0heads facing the\u00a0plant so I didn’t get many shots with a catch light or even eye contact. Somehow this one found the time to look my way for a moment.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, 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 think their tail at this stage of development is particularly attractive. Apparently the central feathers grow longest first and the others lag behind in the order of their closeness to the center and this gives their tail at this young age an unusually handsome\u00a0look in my book. According to BNA their “tails grow rapidly so that within 7\u201310 d of leaving the nest, young become difficult to distinguish from adults” and that\u00a0suggests that at least one of these birds left the nest quite\u00a0recently.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, 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

This one gave me one of those cute coquettish looks. Maybe “she” was flirting with me…<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, 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

But if juveniles look a little rough when they’re dry it doesn’t compare to their disarray when wet. There’s a seep very close by and because of its seclusion many birds were using it for bathing. But to dry off they typically came out into the sun.<\/p>\n

This bedraggled\u00a0juvie was far away but I couldn’t resist invading its\u00a0privacy as\u00a0it dried off after bathing.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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In the western US common mullein is often referred to as “cowboy toilet paper” but chickadees use it for food. These two youngsters may have been siblings but that doesn’t mean they had to be friendly over their breakfast.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62248,"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":[334,4133],"tags":[4138,2351,4135,4139,4136,136,768,190,4134,4137,311],"class_list":["post-62243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-black-capped-chickadee","tag-bathe","tag-black-capped-chickadee","tag-common-mullein","tag-cowboy-toilet-paper","tag-down-feathers","tag-feeding","tag-immature","tag-juvenile","tag-poecile-atricapillus","tag-tail-feather-growth-pattern","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/black-capped-chickadee-1017-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-gbV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62243","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=62243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}