{"id":67393,"date":"2018-12-25T04:17:25","date_gmt":"2018-12-25T11:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=67393"},"modified":"2018-12-25T04:17:25","modified_gmt":"2018-12-25T11:17:25","slug":"a-merry-christmas-to-all-of-my-feathered-photography-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/25\/a-merry-christmas-to-all-of-my-feathered-photography-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"A Merry Christmas To All Of My Feathered Photography Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t have many Christmassy photos but this one certainly has the feel of the season. Some will have seen it before but I don’t think it matters much on this special day.<\/p>\n

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The Song Sparrow was feeding on ice-encrusted seeds on a very cold January morning at Farmington Bay. The sparrow’s mouth is full of seeds and ice and there’s more ice falling next to his long, straight tail. The bird is fluffed up in an effort to keep warm in the extreme cold as he\u00a0was\u00a0stoking his furnace by eating the seeds. I love the way he’s squatted\u00a0comfortably down\u00a0on the twig as if he’s prepared for a long session at the\u00a0buffet table.<\/p>\n

Birds always struggle to survive in conditions like this and when I’m out there and experiencing the same conditions (from the relative warmth of my pickup) I\u00a0often think of how lucky we are to have\u00a0life so much easier.<\/p>\n

And during the holiday season we really pamper ourselves which for me makes the contrast seem\u00a0more extreme. And even inequitable. So this time of year I always try to\u00a0be extra-appreciative of\u00a0what I have, including but not limited to a warm and comfortable\u00a0home, plenty of good food, family and\u00a0good friends. And that “good friends” part includes\u00a0many of you, those who follow and contribute to\u00a0Feathered Photography.<\/p>\n

Literally for generations my family has used “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays” as almost interchangeable greetings of the season so it’s a tradition that I continue to\u00a0follow, despite some folks feeling differently about it. We may not all celebrate Christmas in the same way but I take no offense with either greeting and whichever one I may use I’m sincere with my accompanying\u00a0warm wishes when I say it.<\/p>\n

So Merry Christmas my friends. And Happy Holidays too.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

I don’t have many Christmassy photos but this one certainly has the feel of the season.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67397,"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":[334,2782,392,523],"tags":[1794,521,4375,180,522,290],"class_list":["post-67393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-song-sparrows","tag-christmas","tag-frost","tag-happy-holidays","tag-ice","tag-melospiza-melodia","tag-song-sparrow"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/song-sparrow-christmas-greeting-2154b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-hwZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67393","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=67393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}