{"id":85816,"date":"2020-06-01T05:21:38","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T11:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=85816"},"modified":"2020-06-01T05:40:25","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T11:40:25","slug":"belted-kingfisher-in-a-variety-of-interesting-poses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/01\/belted-kingfisher-in-a-variety-of-interesting-poses\/","title":{"rendered":"Belted Kingfisher In A Variety Of Interesting Poses"},"content":{"rendered":"

This male, photographed near a mountain stream three days ago, might have been my most prolific posing kingfisher ever. Too bad he wasn’t in a more attractive setting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

It’s the same bird I posted in a cluttered setting several days ago. This time he’s on a different perch but the clutter’s still there. He wasn’t particularly close and the branches and twigs are so busy I almost didn’t even fire my shutter but my photographer’s instincts kicked in when he began to perform.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, 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

It all started with an itchy neck.<\/p>\n

It’s amazing that he could reach that spot on his neck with his feet attached to such stubby legs but he did it. His technique was to drop his right wing, wrap his short leg over the top of it and then lean in the direction of his foot with his neck and head to make it a shorter distance to reach.<\/p>\n

That itch and resulting scratch set a series of posing events into motion including…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, 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

a languorous downward stretch of his left wing. He turned his head at an angle that very nearly prevented me from getting any light in his eye but this is one of the shots where I did manage to get a catch light. He never did stretch his right wing downward.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

Next came a bilateral upward wing stretch. It was another slow stretch – this is only the beginning of it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

Eventually he really got into it, including opening his beak about as wide as he possibly could. It really didn’t look like a yawn to me but I can’t say conclusively that it wasn’t.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, 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

But his performance was interrupted when he spotted a fish in the water below and behind him. In a flash he…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, 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

dove on it. I was hugely disappointed to not get any light in his eye because I really like this flight posture and angle.<\/p>\n

As far as I could tell, he missed the fish.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

This male, photographed near a mountain stream three days ago, might have been my most prolific posing kingfisher ever.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85821,"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":[2853,334,395],"tags":[2329,1239,144,146,2330,1840,511,2421],"class_list":["post-85816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belted-kingfishers","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","tag-belted-kingfisher","tag-diving","tag-fishing","tag-flight","tag-megaceryle-alcyon","tag-scratching","tag-stretching","tag-yawning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/belted-kingfisher-4107-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mk8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85816","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=85816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}