{"id":62709,"date":"2018-08-26T04:41:30","date_gmt":"2018-08-26T10:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=62709"},"modified":"2018-08-26T12:58:49","modified_gmt":"2018-08-26T18:58:49","slug":"the-serviceberry-eating-strategy-of-a-lazuli-bunting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/26\/the-serviceberry-eating-strategy-of-a-lazuli-bunting\/","title":{"rendered":"The Serviceberry-eating Strategy Of A Lazuli Bunting"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s often little things like the subtle survival skills of\u00a0birds that interest me most.<\/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

Yesterday morning I photographed this hungry female Lazuli Bunting in the Wasatch Mountains and serviceberries were on her breakfast menu, especially that prime\u00a0berry\u00a0at front left.<\/p>\n

But as I see it there are two problems with a bunting trying to eat serviceberries. They’re too big to swallow whole and they’re hanging from flexible\u00a0stems so if the bird tries to peck into them with its beak to get at the soft juicy parts they\u00a0just rebound away and aren’t punctured.\u00a0That skin is relatively tough and not easy for them to get through.<\/p>\n

But this bird had a strategy.<\/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

Several times she opened her beak about as wide as she could which engulfed a large part of the berry in her beak and then she chomped down to flatten it and partially break open\u00a0the skin.<\/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

And then after seventeen more clicks of my shutter she did it again but this time the berry was already slightly\u00a0flattened so she\u00a0was able to\u00a0really wrap her beak around it before she applied any pressure. She made no attempt to pluck it off its stalk that I noticed and I was watching her carefully.<\/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

And then she\u00a0simply\u00a0dipped her beak into the now partially open berry and leisurely\u00a0helped herself to its soft, juicy\u00a0pulp. (I’ve cropped tightly on the bird for this shot for better detail).<\/p>\n

Like I said it’s\u00a0a little thing but very often it’s the little things that enable birds to survive. When we’re watching birds in the field\u00a0we\u00a0rarely\u00a0notice\u00a0subtle behaviors\u00a0like this because they typically happen too fast and we’re usually not close enough to the action to see the required detail.<\/p>\n

But the magic of telephoto photography can allow us to see and appreciate them. I think that’s neat as hell.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – Did any regular readers notice anything that looked familiar on the serviceberry plant? <\/em><\/p>\n

I see two yellow-orange structures growing off the plant that strongly resemble the mold\/rust I featured on a Gray Catbird post eleven days ago<\/a>. That catbird was also\u00a0perched in a serviceberry bush. I’ve seen several other examples of this presumed\u00a0mold growing on serviceberry since then so I suspect it’s much more common than I thought.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Addendum: Early this afternoon I received the following email from fellow photographer Ed King. Apparently Ed knows a lot more about these fungi than the rest of us. Thank you, Ed – mystery solved as far as I’m concerned:<\/p>\n

“Ron,<\/p>\n

Noticed another reference to the fungus on Serviceberry in your blog post today.<\/p>\n

The fungus you’re seeing on Serviceberry leaves is likely Cedar-apple rust (or a close relative). The structures that caught your eye are aecia — reproductive structures formed on the underside of the leaf — that produce aeciospores, and the horn-like projections are tubes through which the aeciospores are released. As you probably recall, from biology text illustrations of Stem Rust of Wheat, perhaps, rust fungi can have complex lifecycles that may involve the production of as many as five different spore types, and typically require alternating infection of two different host plants (though different rust species can vary in these characteristics).<\/p>\n

In the case of Cedar-apple rust, completion of the life cycle depends on alternating infection of juniper and apple trees, though Serviceberry can serve as a substitute for apple.<\/p>\n

Hope this helps to clear up the Serviceberry\/fungus mystery.<\/p>\n

Ed King”<\/p>\n

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

It’s often little things like the subtle survival skills of birds that interest me most.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62712,"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":[334,392,569],"tags":[4169,4166,571,4167,572,4168,4140,311],"class_list":["post-62709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-lazuli-buntings","tag-cedar-apple-rust","tag-eating-technique","tag-lazuli-bunting","tag-mold","tag-passerina-amoena","tag-rust","tag-serviceberry","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/lazuli-bunting-4294-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-gjr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62709","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=62709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}