{"id":64140,"date":"2018-10-03T05:40:54","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T11:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=64140"},"modified":"2018-10-03T06:19:34","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T12:19:34","slug":"sage-thrashers-playing-king-of-the-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/03\/sage-thrashers-playing-king-of-the-hill\/","title":{"rendered":"Sage Thrashers Playing King Of The Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

This bird almost waited too long to get the hell\u00a0out of\u00a0Dodge.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/6.3, 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

Twelve days ago I had a great time photographing a variety of birds on a gorgeous wild rose loaded with colorful rose hips. I’m not sure what attracted them to the bush in such\u00a0numbers and varieties\u00a0because I never noticed any of them eating the hips so maybe they were just pleasing their own sense of aesthetics by perching in an attractive setting (said facetiously).<\/p>\n

This Sage Thrasher was one of them.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, 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

When I saw the thrasher crouch to take off I instinctively fired a short burst in hopes of getting a nice takeoff shot. That didn’t happen but I did get some unexpected and interesting behavior in the next frame.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, 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

It’s called displacement. Another thrasher flew in and displaced the bird that had been perched there. The\u00a0incoming bird was so aggressive about it and confident of\u00a0its status relative to the first bird that it\u00a0apparently landed on the same twig just as the other thrasher was leaving it. I even\u00a0have to wonder if their feet didn’t touch during the perch exchange.<\/p>\n

Birds displace other birds for a variety of reasons but they’re mostly related to social status,\u00a0dominance and competition for resources (food, territory, mates etc.). The\u00a0birds involved\u00a0may be of the same species or different species. Most anyone who loves birds has seen it because it’s a behavior that often occurs at or near bird feeders.<\/p>\n

Raptors do it too. If you’re interested here’s a link to a post I\u00a0published of a Golden Eagle displacing a Cooper’s Hawk<\/a>\u00a0(or possibly\u00a0a Sharp-shinned Hawk).<\/p>\n

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I’ve posted several birds on this wild rose recently so I thought some viewers might enjoy a different perspective on it. This photo was taken in the golden light of morning so the colors are slightly skewed but in a pleasing way. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more lush looking, rose hip-loaded\u00a0wild rose here in the desert.<\/p>\n

And it sure was productive for birds while it was in its prime but I visited the area again recently and there wasn’t a single bird on it in the time I was there.<\/p>\n

Birds are unpredictable like that.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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This bird almost waited too long to get the hell out of Dodge.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64143,"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":[334,394,379],"tags":[3079,1535,271,311,2749],"class_list":["post-64140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-sage-thrashers","tag-displacement","tag-oreoscoptes-montanus","tag-sage-thrasher","tag-utah-2","tag-wild-rose-hips"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/sage-thrasher-3673-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-gGw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64140","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=64140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}