{"id":63156,"date":"2018-09-08T04:56:52","date_gmt":"2018-09-08T10:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=63156"},"modified":"2018-09-08T05:20:19","modified_gmt":"2018-09-08T11:20:19","slug":"spotted-towhees-transitioning-into-adult-plumage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/08\/spotted-towhees-transitioning-into-adult-plumage\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotted Towhee(s) Transitioning Into Adult Plumage"},"content":{"rendered":"

These juveniles\u00a0look a little scruffy this time of year but I refuse to make a big deal out them not looking their best, especially after the photo I posted of myself two days ago.<\/p>\n

I photographed this bird, or these birds, yesterday in the Wasatch Mountains. I can’t be confident these photos are all of the same bird because\u00a0they\u00a0were\u00a0popping up onto the brush pile over time\u00a0but hidden at other times so I couldn’t keep track. Almost immediately after arriving at this shooting spot I cranked up\u00a0my ISO to 1600 to give me more shutter speed because of intermittent\u00a0cloud cover. Regular readers know why I do that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 1600, 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

Young Spotted Towhees only retain their juvenile plumage for a few short weeks before transitioning into adult plumage and\u00a0they’re in that transition now so they\u00a0look a little “slapped together”. Most of the towhees I’ve been seeing lately look just about like this.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 1600, 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 have to be careful when framing this species in my viewfinder because that long tail is very easy to clip or cut off. Here I had a shutter speed of 1\/2000 sec. but it still wasn’t enough to…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 1600, 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

get much of the bird as sharp as I like when it began to take off. I’m including the shot because of the unusual look at that long tail while it’s flared. Spotted and Eastern Towhees are known for having “white corners” on their open tails.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 1600, 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

These birds are frustrating for me because most of the time I can clearly hear them\u00a0scratching around in the dead leaves beneath the bushes while they’re uncovering food\u00a0(sometimes it sounds like there’s a herd of deer in there and I’m not kidding). But they rarely come out to play so I’m always happy to get a relatively clear shot like this one. It doesn’t happen very often.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/6.3, ISO 1600, 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

Like most youngsters (and some adults like me) this one was a messy eater. At first I thought this bird might have some kind of growth on its lower mandible but\u00a0when I zoomed in on the high-resolution version of the image it was clearly just food debris.<\/p>\n

I’ll admit to being\u00a0disappointed that I wasn’t able to get any really nice photos of snazzy-looking adult males in breeding plumage this year.<\/p>\n

Maybe next year…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

These juveniles look a little scruffy this time of year but I refuse to make a big deal out them not looking their best, especially after the photo I posted of myself two days ago.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63158,"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":[334,392,2473],"tags":[2905,2475,2474,311],"class_list":["post-63156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-spotted-towhees","tag-juvenile-plumage","tag-pipilo-maculatus","tag-spotted-towhee","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/spotted-towhee-7605-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-gqE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63156","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=63156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}