{"id":74745,"date":"2019-08-21T05:54:12","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T11:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=74745"},"modified":"2019-08-21T06:37:56","modified_gmt":"2019-08-21T12:37:56","slug":"female-lazuli-bunting-feeding-on-serviceberries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/21\/female-lazuli-bunting-feeding-on-serviceberries\/","title":{"rendered":"Female Lazuli Bunting Feeding On Serviceberries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A &#8220;berry&#8221; isn&#8217;t always a\u00a0 berry&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"74748\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/21\/female-lazuli-bunting-feeding-on-serviceberries\/lazuli-bunting-4256b-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/lazuli-bunting-4256b-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"900,672\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;6.3&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;Ron Dudley&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;Canon EOS 7D Mark II&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1535183158&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;700&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;800&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.0004&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"lazuli bunting 4256b ron dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/lazuli-bunting-4256b-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-74748 size-full\" title=\"lazuli-bunting-4256b-ron-dudley\" src=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/lazuli-bunting-4256b-ron-dudley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/lazuli-bunting-4256b-ron-dudley.jpg 900w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/lazuli-bunting-4256b-ron-dudley-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/lazuli-bunting-4256b-ron-dudley-768x573.jpg 768w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/lazuli-bunting-4256b-ron-dudley-150x112.jpg 150w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/lazuli-bunting-4256b-ron-dudley-400x299.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>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<p>Last year at this time when berries of all local varieties were far more abundant than they are this year I photographed quite a few songbird species feeding on them. Back then I posted a short series of photos of this female Lazuli Bunting to demonstrate her feeding technique as she feasted on serviceberries that were too large for her to swallow whole but I left this one out because other photos documented that technique better. But aesthetically this may be my favorite shot of the bunch so I wanted to post it sometime. This is that sometime.<\/p>\n<p>Of course females of the species are far less colorful and flashy than males but I still like her subtle colors, the setting with the berries, the light on the bird, the background and her determination to get at the juicy meat of the berry that she can&#8217;t swallow whole. She succeeded too but it was a challenge for her to get through the tough skin of a wobbly berry hanging from a flexible stalk.<\/p>\n<p>This time of year I see a variety of critters feeding on berries of various colors including red, blue, purple, black and even green berries that haven&#8217;t yet ripened. And to be honest I&#8217;m not very good at identifying what type they are, in part because I&#8217;m a rank amateur when it comes to field botany.<\/p>\n<p>So sometimes I can be fooled into thinking some food item is a berry when it isn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/least-chipmunk-8559-ron-dudley.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"74753\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/21\/female-lazuli-bunting-feeding-on-serviceberries\/least-chipmunk-8559-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/least-chipmunk-8559-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"900,669\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;6.3&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;RON DUDLEY&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;Canon EOS 7D Mark II&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1566207157&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;700&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;800&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.00015625&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"least chipmunk 8559 ron dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/least-chipmunk-8559-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-74753 size-full\" title=\"least-chipmunk-8559-ron-dudley\" src=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/least-chipmunk-8559-ron-dudley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"669\" srcset=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/least-chipmunk-8559-ron-dudley.jpg 900w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/least-chipmunk-8559-ron-dudley-300x223.jpg 300w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/least-chipmunk-8559-ron-dudley-768x571.jpg 768w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/least-chipmunk-8559-ron-dudley-150x112.jpg 150w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/least-chipmunk-8559-ron-dudley-400x297.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what happened a couple of days ago with this chipmunk. He had a small stash of what through my lens I initially thought were berries on top of the post and stored in his cheek pouches. The &#8220;berries&#8221; were large and small and red or green but this one still had long sepals attached so after I got home and looked at my photos it became obvious even to me that they were rose hips instead of berries (which confirmed what Mia told me they were in the field).<\/p>\n<p>A variety of birds, squirrels, rabbits, bears and wild game feed on rose hips and many humans find them delicious, tasting like a cross between tart apples, plums and rose petals. They&#8217;re also rich in vitamin C but beware, when humans eat their hairy inner seeds they can seriously irritate our intestines.<\/p>\n<p>You can rest assured that I won&#8217;t be eating rose hips anytime soon because apparently I can&#8217;t even distinguish them from berries.<\/p>\n<p>To both paraphrase and bastardize Gertrude Stein, &#8220;A berry is a berry isn&#8217;t necessarily a berry.&#8221; It may be a rose hip&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Ron<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>An update on my planned meeting with Erin Holmes: Yesterday I said that Erin, the new manager at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, had invited me to sit down with her and discuss some of the concerns and questions I have about recent management decisions at the refuge and I mentioned that I hoped to meet with her today. But because of scheduling conflicts that meeting won&#8217;t occur until tomorrow morning. I hope to report back to my readers about what I learn in that meeting in Friday&#8217;s post.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I look forward to meeting with Erin. She seems like a genuinely nice and accommodating person and I&#8217;m sure she&#8217;s a go-getter. Besides I&#8217;m delighted that the new manager of one of our premier National Wildlife Refuges is a woman. And it made me smile that part of her official email signature includes this, apparently to avoid any confusion about it: &#8220;Erin Holmes (she\/her)&#8221;\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But a &#8220;berry&#8221; isn&#8217;t always a  berry&#8230;<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/21\/female-lazuli-bunting-feeding-on-serviceberries\/\"><span>Continue reading<\/span><i class=\"crycon-right-dir\"><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74748,"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":[334,392,569,4109],"tags":[3023,137,4675,571,572,4673,4176,4674],"class_list":["post-74745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-lazuli-buntings","category-least-chipmunk","tag-adult-female","tag-female","tag-gertrude-stein","tag-lazuli-bunting","tag-passerina-amoena","tag-rose-hip","tag-serviceberries","tag-what-birds-and-animals-eat-rose-hips"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/lazuli-bunting-4256b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-jrz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74745","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=74745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}