{"id":89086,"date":"2020-08-31T05:39:18","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T11:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=89086"},"modified":"2020-08-31T05:45:43","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T11:45:43","slug":"blue-gray-gnatcatcher-in-a-fragrant-sumac-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/31\/blue-gray-gnatcatcher-in-a-fragrant-sumac-bush\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue-gray Gnatcatcher In A Fragrant Sumac Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blue-gray Gnatcatchers are tiny and hyperactive. This one from yesterday morning was one of the most difficult photo subjects I’ve ever tried to draw a bead on.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, 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

I was attempting to photograph a couple of Sage Thrashers when this little guy popped up out of the bush as a complete surprise to me. This first photo is pretty close to a butt shot but it allows a good look at some of the field marks of the species, including the whites in the wing and tail.<\/p>\n

Their unusually long tail constitutes over 45% of their total length.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, 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’ was incredibly agile and quick as he darted through the bush while foraging for tiny insects and spiders. Because of his speed I took more soft shots of him than I can count.<\/p>\n

Here he’s about to jump to a new perch but which one would it be?<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, 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 chose the closest one, in this shot he had just landed on it.<\/p>\n

The previous photo in the burst shows him at the beginning of his jump but that photo was soft so I’m not including it. Because I’d previously been photographing much larger and slower Sage Thrashers I was shooting at f\/6.3 and forgot to change my setting for this smaller, faster bird. If I’d been shooting at f\/5.6 I’d have had more shutter speed and the jumping shot might have been sharp enough.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, 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

In the next shot in the burst he’d settled onto his perch for what is probably the best photo I managed to get of him. To give you an idea of the relative size of this species they weigh significantly less than 1\/4th as much as a House Sparrow (6 grams vs 28 grams).<\/p>\n

Several of our hummingbirds weigh more than that.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Blue-gray Gnatcatchers are tiny and hyperactive. This one from yesterday morning was one of the most difficult photo subjects I’ve ever tried to draw a bead on.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89089,"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":[6,334,3579],"tags":[3581,679,4213,3580,730,5320,311,3373],"class_list":["post-89086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-blue-gray-gnatcatcher","tag-blue-gray-gnatcatcher","tag-field-marks","tag-fragrant-sumac","tag-polioptila-caerulea","tag-size","tag-tail-length","tag-utah-2","tag-weight"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/blue-gray-gnatcatcher-2560-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-naS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89086","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=89086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}