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<\/p>\nMy time with this bird and others ended prematurely because of an encounter with a porcupine. A dead porcupine at that.<\/p>\n
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1\/5000, 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 rarely post photos of House Finches, not because they’re common but because I don’t get many of them in natural settings I like. I find them easy to photograph at my feeder or elsewhere in my\u00a0yard but in the places I normally shoot they’re not very common and I’m often concentrating on other birds anyway.<\/p>\n But yesterday morning\u00a0I was at my favorite serviceberry\u00a0bush in the mountains when this male landed in front of me and started munching on berries. As you can see he was a messy eater and it only got worse.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/5000, 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 Sometimes he\u00a0had so much juice and so\u00a0many berry gobs on his bill that he had to shake his head to get rid of them. I tried to get some photos of flying berry bits but he always had his eyes closed or I\u00a0got no catch light in the eye when he did it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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 This ripe one was his berry of choice for this feeding\u00a0session.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/5000, 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 Sometimes he got a pretty good chunk of it but man what a mess he was!<\/p>\n He fed here for quite a while and I got many photos of him eating but when he was through he was…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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 just as intent on cleaning his bill as he had been about eating like a pig (not to disparage pigs…).<\/p>\n He flew to a dying part of the bush for the cleaning\u00a0activities and he worked his bill over for what I estimated to be at least two full minutes. Think about it – two minutes is a very long time for a songbird to be cleaning its bill. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bird of any species, including raptors, clean their bill for that long.<\/p>\n Perhaps he was embarrassed by how messy it was to start with…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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 But when he was eventually\u00a0finished he’d done a\u00a0reasonably good job.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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 may or may not be the same bird several minutes later as it took off\u00a0after another berry-eating session in a slightly more hidden part of the bush. I presume it’s a different bird because he sure was a more tidy eater.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I left the tree and headed for\u00a0home almost an hour earlier than usual because of a dead porcupine on the side of the road. In order to get the best light on the tree and be far enough off the road for safety reasons I had to straddle that stinky carcass with my\u00a0tires (over 7 miles of gravel\u00a0road and the damn thing had to be exactly there!). The porcupine was beneath my pickup and it was\u00a0rancid and ripe. The stink was truly hellacious and I could stand it only so long before I backed up a few feet in hopes the breeze would blow\u00a0the stink\u00a0away from me so I could\u00a0choke down\u00a0my chocolate donut.\u00a0Moving helped a little but not nearly enough. I never did move forward again for the best light on the tree but I was able to get my donut down – a small victory.<\/p>\n In\u00a01965 when I was 18 years old I had hernia surgery in a small-town Montana hospital. They anesthetized me with ether and for more than 24 hours after I woke up that\u00a0ether smell and taste seemed to ooze from every cell and pore in my body. It was hideous and sickening and I’ll never forget it.\u00a0My experience with the smell of the\u00a0decomposing porcupine\u00a0reminded me of that surgery\u00a0experience because\u00a0the\u00a0smell\u00a0was with me for the entire 45 minute drive back to my home. I had to eat something\u00a0after I got home\u00a0to mostly\u00a0get rid of it. Growing up on a Montana farm I’ve been around many dead, ripe cows and a few deer and other critters but believe me, rotten porcupine takes the proverbial cake! And I’m usually not particularly sensitive to smells.<\/p>\n See, I told you in yesterday’s post I sometimes blabber on and on. Couldn’t help myself – I think that smell’s coming back again as I type this…<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My time with this bird and others ended prematurely because of an encounter with a porcupine. A dead porcupine at that.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/house-finch-5756-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"house-finch-5756-ron-dudley\\"")
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