{"id":79380,"date":"2019-12-12T05:50:37","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T12:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=79380"},"modified":"2019-12-12T06:53:09","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T13:53:09","slug":"male-hooded-merganser-this-time-in-water-mostly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/12\/male-hooded-merganser-this-time-in-water-mostly\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Hooded Merganser, This Time In Water (mostly)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drake Hoodies may be pretty little ducks but their flashy and contrasty colors make them one of the most difficult exposures I’ve ever attempted.<\/p>\n

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1\/1250, 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

This is the male Hooded Merganser I photographed three days ago. Most of the shots I posted of him previously were taken after he’d come out of the water so I wanted to include a few with him in more typical fresh water habitat. Since these photos were taken just before sunset the warm colors of the reflections in the water are complementary to one of the the dominant colors of the bird.<\/p>\n

An unusually high percentage of my photos of him were poorly exposed so they’ll be deleted for that reason. Those whites are really white and the blacks are aggressive photon-suckers so in many of my photos the whites were blown or the blacks had no detail at all. Or both. It was disappointing.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/7.1, 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

The angle of the merganser to the sun had to be just right for me to manage a decent exposure.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

While he was on the water he posed very little but in this shot I like the tilt of his head and the texture we can see in his crest.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In my ignorance I always thought Hooded Mergansers were strict carnivores, eating things like small fish, aquatic insects and crustaceans (crayfish in particular) almost exclusively. But in this heavily cropped shot taken after he came out of the water he appeared to be eating grass or seeds. A little research confirmed that they do eat vegetation occasionally.<\/p>\n

This closeup reveals the tiny serrations on his slender bill that allow him to securely capture his more typical and more elusive fish and invertebrate prey.<\/p>\n

I’ve looked for this bird since these photos were taken but struck out. Maybe he’s moved on but I’m hoping he was just hiding from me and I’ll have better luck on another day.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Drake Hoodies may be pretty little ducks but their flashy and contrasty colors make them one of the most difficult exposures I’ve ever attempted.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79383,"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":[334,392,4406],"tags":[107,4860,2809,3206,3207,211,275,311],"class_list":["post-79380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-hooded-mergansers","tag-diet","tag-difficult-exposure","tag-drake","tag-hooded-merganser","tag-lophodytes-cucullatus","tag-male","tag-serrated-bill","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/hooded-merganser-8591-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-kEk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79380","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=79380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}