{"id":87709,"date":"2020-07-23T05:55:19","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T11:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=87709"},"modified":"2020-07-23T06:23:26","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T12:23:26","slug":"wilsons-phalaropes-along-the-antelope-island-causeway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/23\/wilsons-phalaropes-along-the-antelope-island-causeway\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilson’s Phalaropes Along The Antelope Island Causeway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yet another bird that takes advantage of the Great Salt Lake’s brine flies and brine shrimp as a food source and they do so in huge numbers.<\/p>\n

Two days ago one of my goals on a visit to Antelope Island was to see and photograph the Wilson’s Phalaropes that use the Great Salt Lake as a migratory staging area.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

They’re a small species and most of them are far out on the lake so photographing them well is a challenge but when they take flight it can be fun to take photos of their murmurations as they whiz by.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Their ventral whites really flash in the morning light when the flock suddenly turns in concert to present their bellies to the photographer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Generally phalaropes are skittish birds so even though there’s thousands of them out there on the lake it’s hard to find any close enough to the causeway for decent photos. But on this day some of them were closer than usual and I wondered if it was because of reduced traffic and activity on the causeway because of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

These two were performing the patented ‘spinning’ behavior of phalaropes where they swim rapidly in tight circles to create a slight whirlpool current that brings up food from the bottom. In many cases they’re feeding on brine shrimp but they also pick off brine flies from the water’s surface. There are two brine flies in flight in front of the bird on\u00a0 the left.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I was slightly surprised to find a few phalaropes fairly close on the rocky shore. Some were simply sunning themselves but others like this one were feeding on brine flies on the rocks.<\/p>\n

Wilson’s Phalaropes are nonterritorial although they will occasionally defend feeding sites. I was lucky enough to witness that behavior when this bird suddenly turned on the rocks and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

chased off another phalarope just out of frame to the right.<\/p>\n

I was actually pretty happy to get this shot. It’s one of my more interesting photos of a species that I usually have considerable difficulty getting close to.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Note: On this day I was remiss in not taking any photos of the phalaropes far out on the lake.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So I decided to include this photo taken three years ago along the same area of the causeway. This huge murmuration of phalaropes was a living, churning mass that turned from dark to light and back again as the birds cavorted in the morning sun. <\/em><\/p>\n

Watching them was literally hypnotizing.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Yet another bird that takes advantage of the Great Salt Lake’s brine flies and brine shrimp as a food source and they do so in huge numbers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87713,"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":[3,334,392,438],"tags":[729,728,136,146,160,2630,2631,5257,432],"class_list":["post-87709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-wilsons-phalarope-shore-birds","tag-brine-flies","tag-brine-shrimp","tag-feeding","tag-flight","tag-great-salt-lake","tag-phalaropus-tricolor","tag-spinning","tag-staging-area","tag-wilsons-phalarope"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/wilsons-phalarope-2799-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mOF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87709","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=87709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}