{"id":88600,"date":"2020-08-17T05:39:17","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T11:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=88600"},"modified":"2020-08-17T06:05:38","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T12:05:38","slug":"female-western-tanager-showing-her-apparent-displeasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/17\/female-western-tanager-showing-her-apparent-displeasure\/","title":{"rendered":"Female Western Tanager Showing Her Apparent Displeasure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plus a ‘bird’ of a very different feather.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

This might be the most cooperative Western Tanager I’ve ever photographed. Five days ago she landed on this branch in the mountains and stayed there long enough for me to get almost 200 shots of her. And she was quite close to me. In my experience that’s highly unusual for a tanager – they’re nearly always nervous and highly skittish.<\/p>\n

As a bonus I actually liked the diagonal perch and her position on it which allowed me to get a clean background but still have leaves around her to provide more habitat and frame her nicely.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

At one point she seemed to by studying what I believe to be a colorful leaf gall on the underside of one of the willow leaves. I think it resembles a red Cheerio. Although Western Tanagers are primarily insect eaters they also eat fruit so perhaps she thought it might be a berry since they’re common in the area right now.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

If that’s what she thought she wasn’t fooled for long. Here I caught her seeming to stick her tongue out at the gall as if showing her displeasure. I didn’t notice her tongue in the field when I took the photo but it brought a smile when I spotted it while reviewing my images at home.<\/p>\n

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OK, now we’ll move on to a different kind of ‘bird’. Usually when I see low flying aircraft in wild areas while I’m photographing birds my only reaction is extreme annoyance. But I found this helicopter that flew overhead earlier on the same morning I photographed this tanager to be interesting for several reasons.<\/p>\n

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