{"id":88261,"date":"2020-08-07T05:55:13","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T11:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=88261"},"modified":"2020-08-07T07:37:14","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T13:37:14","slug":"juvenile-mountain-bluebird-exploring-a-gnarly-old-fence-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/07\/juvenile-mountain-bluebird-exploring-a-gnarly-old-fence-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Juvenile Mountain Bluebird Exploring A Gnarly Old Fence Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

The combination of innocence, curiosity and exuberance in very young birds can be fun to watch, if difficult to explain.<\/p>\n

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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

Four days ago I had the privilege of watching this juvenile Mountain Bluebird and one of ‘his’ siblings as they explored this very old and weathered fence post in the Wasatch Mountains. For a while this bird seemed particularly fond of using a loop of barbed wire as a perch while he inspected the possibilities of the post.<\/p>\n

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Here’s a vertical composition of the same photo to allow a slightly better look at the post. It really is a pretty interesting old post – it was studded with rusty nails, wrapped in old rusty wire and partially covered with lichens. That post has seen some history.<\/p>\n

But to be honest I included both compositions because I couldn’t decide which one to go with.<\/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

The young bluebird seemed to be looking for different places on the post where he could perch. Next he chose this rusty old nail, one that looks very similar to the nails we called ‘ten penny nails’ back in the 50’s when I was a kid and helping my dad build granaries on the Montana farm. My unreliable aim with a hammer bent hundreds of those nails over while I was trying to pound them in. Maybe a kid about the age I was back then pounded the bent nail at lower right…<\/p>\n

Perhaps his intention was to go after what appears to be a black beetle wedged in the wood of the post.<\/p>\n

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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

He found a spot where he could hold on near the beetle but he didn’t stay here long and I never saw him show any interest in the beetle – none at all. He may have not even known it was there, although that would surprise me..<\/p>\n

The perch was a precarious one so he…<\/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

returned to the nail with the beetle left undisturbed.<\/p>\n

This is only a butt shot but I think it’s a pretty one. It’s amazing how these young bluebirds can transform from mostly drab colors to beautiful blues in a heartbeat.<\/p>\n

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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

And guess who was watching his entire performance from the top of the same post – one of his siblings who seemed to be as entertained as I was. .<\/p>\n

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I’m not sure why I enjoy watching and photographing the seemingly ‘meaningless’ activities of birds as much as I do. But it keeps me entertained and it beats the hell out of watching TV.<\/p>\n

In these difficult times birds are my saving grace..<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: For a very different take on why we need diversions, be it birds or “cat videos” or both, I recommend a visit to my friend Jim DeWitt’s blog post<\/a><\/span><\/span>, published just a few minutes ago. But if you click the link, be prepared for brutal honesty. In his usual style Jim doesn’t pull any punches.<\/em><\/p>\n

These days we do what we have to do just to survive it all.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

The combination of innocence, curiosity and exuberance in very young birds can be fun to watch, if difficult to explain.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88266,"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":[334,1504],"tags":[5276,683,5275,741,2986,311],"class_list":["post-88261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-mountain-bluebirds","tag-10-penny-nail","tag-beetle","tag-exploring","tag-mountain-bluebird","tag-sialia-currucoides","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/mountain-bluebird-6811-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mXz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88261","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=88261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}