{"id":89929,"date":"2020-09-30T06:01:13","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T12:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=89929"},"modified":"2020-09-30T06:31:09","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T12:31:09","slug":"a-one-eyed-pelican-and-a-one-eared-weasel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/30\/a-one-eyed-pelican-and-a-one-eared-weasel\/","title":{"rendered":"A One-eyed Pelican And A One-eared Weasel"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s no surprise that it’s tough to make a living out there in the wild but I was<\/em> surprised to find this much stark evidence of it on the same morning.<\/p>\n

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A week ago today the American White Pelican on the left was feeding in a small group of its companions at Farmington Bay WMA. The poor bird had an obvious and apparently severe problem with its right eye that I suspect to be an injury. It kept its eye closed for the entire time I had it in my viewfinder. That closed eye stood out like a sore thumb in contrast to the nearly black eyes of the other pelicans.<\/p>\n

I worry about this bird. While feeding in the daytime it’s thought that pelicans locate their prey visually and migration is coming up soon. Without the depth perception provided by binocular vision this pelican will be at a distinct disadvantage during both activities.<\/p>\n

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A short while later while I was photographing the Green Heron I posted yesterday<\/a><\/span><\/span> this one-eared Long-tailed Weasel popped up near one of the boat ramps. Even though there were longer hairs around ‘his’ ear opening the missing ear was obvious.<\/p>\n

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Several times he ran up onto the boat ramp but he was so herky-jerky in his movements he was virtually impossible to keep in focus except for the very brief periods when he stood still.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

Here I caught him at the very beginning of one of his incredibly quick sprints. It was the only time I got him reasonably sharp while he was on the move.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

Typical of weasels he used the length of his sinuous body when he stood up vertically to provide a better look around the place. I guess this is the weasel version of a raptor hunting from an elevated perch.<\/p>\n

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I believe the weasel without one of its external ears will be fine but I have serious concerns about the one-eyed pelican.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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PS – Speaking of “herky-jerky movements”. Can you imagine me with a long lens in my hand, a nearly rare Green Heron in front of me and a highly elusive weasel out in the open to my left? Both were close so I was terribly torn about which direction to aim my lens. I kept swinging it back and forth from one to the other and worrying about my camera settings for two very different subjects in distinctively different settings.<\/em><\/p>\n

I felt like I was playing a game of Whac-A-Mole. And losing badly.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

It’s no surprise that it’s tough to make a living out there in the wild but I was surprised to find this much stark evidence of it on the same morning.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89931,"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":[3374,334,2782,392,351,424],"tags":[420,1008,5372,209,5371,5373],"class_list":["post-89929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-white-pelicans","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-long-tailed-weasels","category-pelicans","tag-american-white-pelican","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-injured-eye","tag-long-tailed-weasel","tag-missing-ear","tag-whac-a-mole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/long-tailed-weasel-8601-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-not","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89929","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=89929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}