{"id":7554,"date":"2012-09-06T08:23:27","date_gmt":"2012-09-06T14:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=7554"},"modified":"2012-09-06T08:23:27","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T14:23:27","slug":"juvenile-willets-in-montanas-centennial-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/06\/juvenile-willets-in-montanas-centennial-valley\/","title":{"rendered":"Juvenile Willets In Montana’s Centennial Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"

On my mid-July trip to the Centennial Valley I spent several days with an adult Willet and two juveniles.\u00a0\u00a0 I reliably found them foraging for insects where a dirt road met Lower Red Rock Lake.\u00a0 Most of the shore birds and wading birds in this area are truly wild and difficult to approach but these three birds were the exception as they repeatedly let me get close as they fed and preened.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"willet<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0This was the most perfectly coiffed of the two juveniles, as the other youngster had a patch of unruly feathers on the back of its head and upper neck.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"willet<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

This particular\u00a0site provided a bountiful Arthropod smorgasbord for the willets, both in the water and on the shoreline.\u00a0 The birds would feed on aquatic insects and crustaceans in the shallow water for a while and then get a little variety in their diet by coming up onto the shore and gobbling down hordes of terrestrial insects.\u00a0 Here, the more unkempt juvie (notice the fluff of feathers on the back of the head) feeds on a variety of dipterans that it flushes\u00a0from the vegetation.\u00a0 I’ve cropped this image\u00a0unconventionally to show more of the “bugs” in the air.\u00a0 I didn’t get a catch light in this shot but this image showed the insects best.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"willet<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4. 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0At times some of the insects almost seemed to dare the Willets to pluck them out of the air.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"willet<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0I like the one-footed balancing act in this stretching pose.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"willet<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The juveniles in particular seemed to do a lot of stretching.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"willet<\/p>\n

I sometimes like to include a shot at the end of a post that shows the setting I was working with.<\/p>\n

The biological diversity of this entire area is amazing – a dream come true for this nature photographer and retired biology\/zoology teacher.<\/p>\n

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

On my mid-July trip to the Centennial Valley I spent several days with an adult Willet and two juveniles.\u00a0\u00a0 I reliably found them foraging for insects where a dirt road met Lower Red Rock Lake.\u00a0 Most of the shore birds and wading birds in this area are truly wild and difficult to approach but these three birds were the exception as they repeatedly let me get close as they fed and preened.   \u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4 \u00a0This was the most perfectly coiffed of the two juveniles, as the other youngster had a patch of unruly feathers on the back of its head and upper neck.     \u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4 This particular\u00a0site provided a bountiful Arthropod smorgasbord for the willets, both in the water and on the shoreline.\u00a0 The birds would feed on aquatic insects and crustaceans in the shallow water for a while and then get a little variety in their diet by coming up onto the shore and gobbling down hordes of terrestrial insects.\u00a0 Here, the more unkempt juvie (notice the fluff of feathers on the back of the head) feeds on a variety of dipterans that it flushes\u00a0from the vegetation.\u00a0 I’ve cropped this image\u00a0unconventionally to show more of the “bugs” in the air.\u00a0 I didn’t get a catch light in this shot but this image showed the insects best.     \u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4. 1.4 tc \u00a0At times some of the insects almost seemed to dare the Willets to pluck them out of…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,343],"tags":[76,555,838,136,837,190,220,263,297,327],"class_list":["post-7554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-willets","tag-catoptrophorus-semipalmatus","tag-centennial-valley","tag-dipterans","tag-feeding","tag-insects","tag-juvenile","tag-montana-2","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-stretch","tag-willet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-1XQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7554","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=7554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}