{"id":73451,"date":"2019-07-15T04:47:23","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T10:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=73451"},"modified":"2019-07-15T07:13:37","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T13:13:37","slug":"american-avocet-chick-at-bear-river-mbr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/15\/american-avocet-chick-at-bear-river-mbr\/","title":{"rendered":"American Avocet Chick At Bear River MBR"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this age avocet chicks are fluffy-butt cuties.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000. 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

Three days ago I spent some time with several Black-necked Stilt and American Avocet chicks at Bear River MBR. I caught this young avocet as it briefly paused in its feeding activities to check out its surroundings. I quite like this shot because of the raised-leg pose, good light on the entire bird, eye contact and the bit of fluffy down stuck to its bill.<\/p>\n

The color of the mostly natal down plumage of avocet chicks at this age already closely matches that of the adult in breeding plumage which some authorities believe to be a form of adult auto-mimicry, intended to fool predators into thinking they’re adults or nearly so and already capable of flight.<\/p>\n

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1\/8000. 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

Being a precocial species avocet chicks stay in the nest no more than 24 hours after hatching of the last chick in the brood and begin to feed themselves almost immediately. This youngster was already skilled at finding food and likely had been for some time.<\/p>\n

Here it has captured a tiny invertebrate but that pesky piece of down is still stuck to its bill.<\/p>\n

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A huge crop of the previous photo (5% of the original image) gives us a better look at the food morsel, probably a larval insect.<\/p>\n

On this day at the refuge stilt and avocet chick size varied considerably but overall their breeding season is coming to a quick conclusion. I hope to get out there again before it’s completely over but it’s going to be close.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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At this age avocet chicks are fluffy-butt cuties.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73456,"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":[437,338,334,392],"tags":[4625,27,49,481,145,709,4626,1837,471],"class_list":["post-73451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-avocets-shore-birds","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-adult-auto-mimicry","tag-american-avocet","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-chick","tag-fledgling","tag-food","tag-invertebrate-prey","tag-plumage","tag-recurvirostra-americana"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/american-avocet-0131b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-j6H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73451","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=73451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}