{"id":63763,"date":"2018-09-23T04:48:09","date_gmt":"2018-09-23T10:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=63763"},"modified":"2018-09-23T04:48:09","modified_gmt":"2018-09-23T10:48:09","slug":"sage-thrasher-regurgitating-a-sumac-pit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/23\/sage-thrasher-regurgitating-a-sumac-pit\/","title":{"rendered":"Sage Thrasher Regurgitating A Sumac Pit"},"content":{"rendered":"

And some slobbering drool made the performance even\u00a0more interesting.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 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 photographed this Sage Thrasher on wild rose two days ago. Some readers will likely recognize the perch as the same one the Northern Mockingbird had been using in yesterday’s post. The rivalry between those two birds and others for perching rights on the wild rose will likely be the subject of a future post.<\/p>\n

Some might suspect that this branch is a set up perch but I assure you, it isn’t. The following 8 photos are sequential shots in a burst.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 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

Suddenly the thrasher began to retch. I figured it was about to regurgitate a sumac pit as I’d seen other thrashers doing\u00a0earlier that morning and I was right. I’m not 100% positive that’s what it was but I’m pretty confident of it.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 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

Here we can just begin to see the pit in the back of the bird’s mouth.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 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 thrasher held it in its mouth for only an instant before…<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 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

deliberately dropping it over the side of its bill.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 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 the seed pit was reluctant to leave because it was still attached to the beak of the bird by stringy mucus originating\u00a0either\u00a0in the crop or the mouth or both.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 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

For a moment it\u00a0swung like a pendulum\u00a0on the stringy mucus…<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 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

before\u00a0the mucus string\u00a0stretched to its breaking point…<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 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 the pit dropped to the ground. Here it can be seen falling through the air\u00a0just below the branch.<\/p>\n

For my first few years of photographing birds\u00a0I nearly always used to miss shots like these and damn it used to make me mad. When birds throw pellets or regurgitate something else the entire process is often, though not always,\u00a0over in less than a second (this sequence of 8 photos\u00a0took just\u00a08\/10ths of a second).\u00a0I can’t tell you how many times I saw it happen through my viewfinder but hadn’t been prepared for fast action so I just sat there like a\u00a0dumbass\u00a0with my finger on the shutter button and watched it all go down without\u00a0firing until it was too late. When that happened often enough I was highly motivated to change my ways.<\/p>\n

The other problem I used to have was buck fever. When I’d see a bird beginning to throw a pellet I was instantly\u00a0so excited that I’d either jerk my lens resulting in blurry photos\u00a0or clipped\u00a0body parts\u00a0or my hands would shake a little (I have essential tremors which makes\u00a0them shake in situations like this)\u00a0with the same blurry results.<\/p>\n

Now I recognize behavioral signals that nearly always precede these behaviors and I’m usually ready for it. And\u00a0I rarely\u00a0get buck fever any more (I think that comes with experience) so my success rate in these situations is much higher than it used to be.<\/p>\n

When these behaviors occur a lot of other things can also go wrong. Birds have a habit of having their backs to you when it happens, their face can be\u00a0in shade, there can be vegetation in front of the falling\u00a0pellet or pit\u00a0or everything can be soft because you don’t’ have enough light or shutter speed. But for this series most everything came together, including having a great perch, so\u00a0if I’d screwed\u00a0it\u00a0up I’d have been kicking my butt for a week.<\/p>\n

Repeated failure\u00a0is great motivation to learn how to get it right.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

And some slobbering drool made the performance even more interesting.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63780,"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":[6,334,395,379],"tags":[1940,4215,1535,265,271,4214,311,2332],"class_list":["post-63763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-sage-thrashers","tag-bird-photography-technique","tag-essentiala-tremors","tag-oreoscoptes-montanus","tag-regurgitate","tag-sage-thrasher","tag-sumac-pit","tag-utah-2","tag-wild-rose"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/sage-thrasher-3975b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-gAr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63763","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=63763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}