![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/yellow-warbler-4353-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"yellow-warbler-4353-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nI should review my older photos more often. And more carefully.<\/p>\n
I’m resigned to staying isolated and staying home over this holiday weekend so yesterday I spent some time catching up on my image-culling backlog. During the process I ran across some two year old photos of a male Yellow Warbler that caught my attention.<\/p>\n
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1\/3200, 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 I photographed him in the Wasatch Mountains on July 1, 2018. He and his mate had three hungry fledglings that they were trying to keep well fed and happy so both adults looked like they’d been through the proverbial ringer. The effort of raising their family combined with the possible effects of molt gave both adults an unkempt look.<\/p>\n When I took this photo and others like it I noticed ‘something’ on the tip of his upper mandible but it was tiny and light green so I presumed it was a bit of plant debris or something similar and didn’t gave it another thought.<\/p>\n Until yesterday when I realized that the photo was sharp so I might be able to identify the object on his bill with confidence if I cropped in real tight.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lo and behold, it wasn’t plant debris after all. It was a fat and juicy (and very lucky, for the moment at least) aphid.<\/p>\n Aphids are only about 1\/10″ long so I was lucky that the tip of the warbler’s bill was sharp enough to make a positive ID (this highly cropped version of the photo is only 5% of the original image, 1 MP of 20 MP). Here the typical pear-shape of aphids and even some of its tiny appendages are apparent.<\/p>\n I realize that being able to ID the aphid is likely no big deal to some (most?) viewers but its a reminder to me that my photo gear has sufficient resolution to potentially resolve many questions in my photos about anatomy, species identification and even behavior. As a biologist that’s important to me.<\/p>\n In the past I’ve often just assumed that such determinations were beyond my reach so I didn’t even make the attempt.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Happy Independence Day, despite the abomination at Mount Rushmore last night.<\/p>\n Please be careful and safe, today especially.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I should review my older photos more often. And more carefully.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/yellow-warbler-4353-huge-crop-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"yellow-warbler-4353-huge-crop-ron-dudley.\\"")
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