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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/white-crowned-sparrow-6719b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"white-crowned-sparrow-6719b-ron-dudley\\"")
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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 1000, 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 Yesterday morning I spent some time photographing songbirds in bushes near a seep (a place where water oozes slowly out of the ground) in a remote area of Box Elder County. I can’t actually see the water but the birds know it’s there and they bathe in it often. Then I can sometimes hear them shaking off while they’re still hidden deep within the bushes. Not long before this shot was taken I could hear a bird shaking its feathers repeatedly..<\/p>\n Then this juvenile White-crowned Sparrow landed in a more exposed spot and continued to shake its feathers. By now its plumage was mostly dry and based on the enthusiasm the sparrow put into its shaking I can see why.<\/p>\n This shot caught some of the tail feathers in extreme flexure stress. I may have never seen tail feathers bend more than this. I just think it’s a visually interesting pose so I decided to share, despite the out of focus leaves and twigs in the middle foreground.<\/p>\n Photos like this illustrate one of the many reasons I typically shoot at such high shutter speeds. It was a very smoky morning so light was low and I needed a higher ISO than usual to get a fast SS. At a slow SS those feathers would have been just a blur.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After my recent mostly birdless camping trip to Montana and Idaho it was exciting to find a variety of birds to photograph yesterday morning. Some of my best photos were of Red-tailed Hawks but I’ve been posting quite a few of them lately so I’ll wait a day or two to post the red-tail shots I took yesterday.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I suspect feathers can’t endure much more flexure stress than this without breaking.<\/p>\n