![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/black-crowned-night-heron-1795-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-crowned-night-heron-1795-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nHere’s an even better look at the occipital plumes of an adult Black-crowned Night Heron. This photo was taken last summer at Bear River MBR. The process of snagging this tiny fish tossed the plumes down the side of the heron where they’re much easier to see.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After photographing the night heron the sun all but disappeared so on an impulse I stopped at the nearby Eccles Wildlife Center to see if I could catch up on recent “goings on” at Farmington with manager Billy Fenimore. I always enjoy visiting with Billy – his pleasant, easy-going manner soothes my sometimes troubled soul and I love his passion for the largely educational mission of the Wildlife Center.<\/p>\n
That stop at the center turned out to be a fortunate “three-fer” for me. Farmington Bay WMA manager Jason Jones stopped in for a cup of coffee so we all shot the breeze for a while and it so happened that HawkWatch International was holding an organizational meeting in the Wildlife Center Auditorium so I was able to visit with Nikki Wayment, Executive Director of HWI.<\/p>\n
So visiting with three old friends turned out to be a welcome salve for the Farmington Curse. And wouldn’t you know it, just about the time we had to head for home the Farmington Curse vanished and sunny skies returned.<\/p>\n
Typical Ron Dudley timing.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Note: Yet another plus that comes from visiting with Nikki is the chance to catch up on the status of Galileo, the Short-eared Owl that Mia and I rescued off of barbed wire several years ago and who now serves as an education bird for HWI. Nikki told me that despite the fact that Galileo can be a little turd at times he’s doing very well overall. Everyone at HWI loves him, including friend and blog follower Tana Peery Hunter who is one of his primary caretakers.<\/em><\/p>\nIn my view Galileo has had enough drama in his short life that he’s earned the right to be a little turd whenever he feels like it.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Farmington Curse strikes again but yesterday morning there was compensation.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81591,"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":[334,1126,2782],"tags":[4162,4946,1008,4947,3257,1432,4950,4949,1127,4948],"class_list":["post-81588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-black-crowned-night-herons","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-billy-fenimore","tag-blackcrowned-night-heron","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-farmington-curse","tag-galileo","tag-hawkwatch-international","tag-jason-jones","tag-nikki-wayment","tag-nycticorax-nycticorax","tag-occipital-plumes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/black-crowned-night-heron-9956b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-ldW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81588","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=81588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/black-crowned-night-heron-9956b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-crowned-night-heron-9956b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/black-crowned-night-heron-9945-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-crowned-night-heron-9945-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n