{"id":87660,"date":"2020-07-22T05:51:51","date_gmt":"2020-07-22T11:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=87660"},"modified":"2020-07-22T07:35:41","modified_gmt":"2020-07-22T13:35:41","slug":"the-antelope-island-brine-fly-feeding-frenzy-is-in-full-swing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/22\/the-antelope-island-brine-fly-feeding-frenzy-is-in-full-swing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Antelope Island Brine Fly Feeding Frenzy Is In Full Swing"},"content":{"rendered":"

An annual insectivorous smorgasbord laid out for birds and other critters.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning Antelope Island itself was slow for birds but the west end of the causeway was buzzing with birds and bugs. The infamous brine flies of the Great Salt Lake are near their peak and gluttonous birds are taking full advantage, gulls especially but others too.<\/p>\n

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Near the shore the flies are so thick it can be very difficult to focus on the birds as they run through the flies to stir them up and gobble them down. Some of my photos of this California Gull were less than sharp for that reason.<\/p>\n

Yes, all that dark stuff on the shore is layers and layers of brine flies.<\/p>\n

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Typically gulls will run one direction gobbling flies and then the other, back and forth until they’re satiated. And then they’ll just stand there among the flies, so full they can hardly move.<\/p>\n

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Yesterday many other birds were taking advantage of the food glut including but not limited to Wilson’s Phalaropes, Willets and Long-billed Curlews. But during ‘fly season’ one of my favorites is the strikingly handsome Franklin’s Gull.<\/p>\n

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Franklin’s Gulls have two strategies for hunting flies. Brine flies spend most of their time in thick mats on the ground along the shore rather than in the air so like the California Gulls the Franklin’s Gulls will often run along the shore to stir the flies into flight and then snatch mouthfuls of them right out of the air.<\/p>\n

But Franklin’s Gulls sometimes use a second strategy by standing still and snatching individual flies out of the air. This second strategy yields far fewer flies but it also takes less energy since they aren’t running. Besides, many of them are just too damned full to run…<\/p>\n

Gulls in particular don’t seem to gobble flies right off the ground, presumably because that method would have sand mixed in with their meal.<\/p>\n

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But birds aren’t the only recipients of the Dipteran bounty.<\/p>\n

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This time of year large spiders in almost unbelievable numbers and variety take advantage of the brine flies as a food source by spinning their webs on almost any plant or human structure near the lake where flies are thick. Most of them are various types of orb weavers like this one I photographed yesterday. This year the largest concentrations of spiders seem to be found along the west end of the causeway rather than on the island itself.<\/p>\n

Antelope Island State Park holds an annual Spider Festival<\/a><\/span><\/span> in early August but this year it will be expanded to a week-long virtual event because of the pandemic. The festival includes a spider photo contest<\/a><\/span><\/span> so those who may be interested in participating in the contest should get their submissions in by August 1. I don’t enter photo contests but this year I’m one of the judges.<\/p>\n

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So if you like birds or insects or spiders you might want to consider making a trip to the island soon. The west end of the causeway is particularly productive for all three right now.\u00a0And don’t worry, brine flies don’t bite. They’re completely harmless, as long as you keep your mouth shut if you decide to walk amongst them.<\/p>\n

But then maybe you’ll be hungry during your visit…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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An annual insectivorous smorgasbord laid out for birds and other critters.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87667,"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":[3,334,5253,8,392,5254],"tags":[31,5255,729,492,539,494,1617,5256,1616],"class_list":["post-87660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-california-gulls","category-ecology-and-environment","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-franklins-gulls","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-antelope-island-spider-festival","tag-brine-flies","tag-california-gull","tag-causeway","tag-franklins-gull","tag-orb-weavers","tag-spider-photo-contest","tag-spiders"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/franklins-gull-2482-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mNS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87660","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=87660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}