{"id":63552,"date":"2018-09-18T05:41:34","date_gmt":"2018-09-18T11:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=63552"},"modified":"2018-09-18T06:10:57","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T12:10:57","slug":"dusky-flycatcher-killing-and-eating-a-yellowjacket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/18\/dusky-flycatcher-killing-and-eating-a-yellowjacket\/","title":{"rendered":"Dusky Flycatcher Killing and Eating A Yellowjacket"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my book\u00a0any critter that beats the snot out of a\u00a0yellowjacket deserves more than faint praise.<\/p>\n

Several days ago I posted a single shot of this flycatcher with the yellowjacket (along with other photos)\u00a0and promised to include more of them in the future. Today I’m keeping my word. All photos are presented in the order they were taken.<\/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

Five days ago in the Wasatch Mountains this Dusky Flycatcher latched on to a potentially painful meal so ‘he’ was very careful to avoid getting stung. This photo was taken soon after he landed here and he’s already holding it by the stinger just to be safe.<\/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

Even though the head isn’t particularly sharp a\u00a0highly cropped version of the previous image reveals two things: he’s holding it by the stinger and he’s beating up on it by slamming it into the perch, as evidenced by the many specks of presumed pollen being knocked off of the yellowjacket. You have to look carefully to see the pollen in the air but it’s there. Yellowjackets don’t use pollen in the same way many bees do but they can\u00a0become covered\u00a0in it\u00a0during their quest for nectar.<\/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

After a few more whaps against the branch the bird seemed to ‘taste’ the insect with its tongue. I’m guessing that he was somehow checking to see if it was ‘dead enough’ for swallowing.<\/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

It wasn’t. The flycatcher apparently wasn’t satisfied with the delayed expiration date of the yellowjacket so he slapped it around again for a while. The cloudy eye\u00a0is caused by the closed nictitating membrane – birds close it in situations like this to protect the eye.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, 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

At this point the yellowjacket looked pretty beat up, including having a flattened abdomen.<\/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

So he tried the taste test with his tongue again.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, 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

Nope, still not dead enough so he beat up on it some more before….<\/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

eventually swallowing it.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2000, 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

The meal was followed by an inevitable bill-cleaning. I wasn’t happy with the out-of-focus vegetation in front of the tip of the bird’s tail in this series but at least the action was clearly visible.<\/p>\n

And another yellowjacket bites the dust. No sleep lost here.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: When I\u00a0noticed that the second to the last photo\u00a0looked\u00a0reasonably sharp I wondered if a huge crop would allow us to see the yellowjacket’s stinger.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Yes, I believe we can see it here, even though this version has been cropped to only 5% of the original photo. Sometimes modern, high-quality optics amaze me and this bird’s head wasn’t perfectly sharp to begin with.<\/em><\/p>\n

At first I thought that what we see is too long to be the stinger (especially compared to the\u00a0shorter stinger of a honeybee) but when I\u00a0looked up\u00a0“yellowjacket stinger” using Google Image Search it\u00a0appears that yellowjackets have stingers that are easily this long. Any thoughts – stinger or something else, perhaps a leg?\u00a0I lean towards stinger<\/em><\/p>\n

Another observation. Here we can see how the rictal bristles in front of the mouth might be helpful in funneling food down the throat.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

In my book any critter that beats the snot out of a yellowjacket deserves more than faint praise.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63560,"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":[334,4195,392],"tags":[4197,4196,1557,1833,256,3654,311,318,3653],"class_list":["post-63552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-dusky-flycatcher","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-dusky-flycatcher","tag-empidonax-oberholseri","tag-insect","tag-pollen","tag-prey","tag-stinger","tag-utah-2","tag-wasatch-mountains","tag-yellowjacket"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/dusky-flycatcher-0440-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-gx2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63552","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=63552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}