{"id":88355,"date":"2020-08-10T05:35:13","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T11:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=88355"},"modified":"2020-08-10T10:09:44","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T16:09:44","slug":"a-young-cedar-waxwing-and-the-mosquito-hawk-that-kept-on-giving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/10\/a-young-cedar-waxwing-and-the-mosquito-hawk-that-kept-on-giving\/","title":{"rendered":"A Young Cedar Waxwing And The Mosquito Hawk That Kept On Giving"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to legs crane flies have a lot to give.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning in the mountains I had buckets of fun with this adventurous but somewhat na\u00efve juvenile Cedar Waxwing. ‘He’ was fearless as he repeatedly flew in close to my pickup while hawking insects and he occasionally landed nearby to consume them.<\/p>\n

All photos are presented in the order they were taken.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

This fairly large insect was one of his snacks. I believe it’s one of our several species of crane flies (mosquito hawks). He had his back to me while he was gobbling down the insect but for this shot he turned my way slightly so I’ve cropped tightly on it so we can see the crane fly and some of its long legs better.<\/p>\n

Those legs play a significant role in this story.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

By the time he turned my way again the fly was inside his mouth though he hadn’t swallowed it yet. Here we see one wing and several legs sticking out and somehow one of those legs ended up on top of his head.<\/p>\n

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A little better look at the situation.<\/p>\n

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By the time this shot was taken I believe he’d swallowed the body of the fly but those pesky legs had detached and were becoming a problem. He tried to get rid of them by repeatedly swiping his bill on the branch but…<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

to no avail. Even the leg on top of his head is still there.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

So he flew into a dense thicket and once again tried to get rid of those annoying appendages.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

A full three minutes after he’d swallowed the fly he landed on another nearby perch and some of the fly legs were still stuck to his head. He didn’t look very happy about it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

So he flew into another thicket and tried to get rid of them again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

But four minutes after that there was still<\/em> at least one leg being a royal pain in the ass directly behind his eye.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

But the next several times I saw him up close all of the fly legs seemed to be gone.<\/p>\n

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I always enjoy watching very young birds learning their life lessons. I doubt that an adult waxwing would have nearly as much trouble getting rid of those troublesome legs and the next time this youngster has to deal with crane fly legs I suspect he’ll do it more efficiently.<\/p>\n

On the other hand I definitely was<\/em> impressed by this young bird’s hunting skills. I watched as he repeatedly and successfully flew out of the bushes and captured insects he’d spotted flying high above him in typical ‘hawking’ fashion.<\/p>\n

He’d already learned some of those essential life lessons well.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

When it comes to legs crane flies have a lot to give.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88356,"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":[334,2659,392],"tags":[1720,1651,449,145,4587,190,447],"class_list":["post-88355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-cedar-waxwings","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-bombycilla-cedrorum","tag-cedar-waxwing","tag-crane-fly","tag-fledgling","tag-hawking-insects","tag-juvenile","tag-mosquito-hawk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/cedar-waxwing-7204-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mZ5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88355","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=88355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}