{"id":90822,"date":"2020-10-29T05:21:10","date_gmt":"2020-10-29T11:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=90822"},"modified":"2020-10-29T05:27:48","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T11:27:48","slug":"canvasbacks-is-it-love-or-is-it-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/29\/canvasbacks-is-it-love-or-is-it-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Canvasbacks – Is It Love Or Is It War?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to Canvasback agonistic behavior appearances can be deceiving.<\/p>\n

This is one of the oldest photos in my portfolio. It was taken at Glover’s Pond in Farmington on April Fool’s Day, 2008 which seems appropriate given the misleading poses and behavior of both birds. I’ve posted other photos of each of these ducks but this one is new to Feathered Photography.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + EF 1.4 Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Even though at first glance these two ducks may look quite different from each other they’re both adult male Canvasbacks in breeding plumage. They look different because the male on the right had been feeding by diving to the bottom of the pond and sticking his entire head into the mud as he probed for submerged plants and aquatic insects. When he’d pop up onto the surface his head was usually entirely covered in mud. I had a blast for over half an hour photographing Ol’ Muddy Head while he was feeding. Among other things I loved the way his scarlet eyes stood out against his muddy face.<\/p>\n

Suddenly the male on the left rushed in and they began their typical ritualized aggressive behavior of pushing against each other chest to chest as they collectively turned in a clockwise circle. It may look like they’re cuddling but the opposite is true and it was hilarious to watch. After much pushing and turning a serious fight eventually broke out and even though Ol’ Muddy Head appears to be smaller he was victorious and chased the other male away.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure if the root cause of the fight was defense of feeding territory or typical aggression between males during breeding season. Ol’ Muddy Head was apparently paired up with a female that had been feeding close to him so it could have been either or both.<\/p>\n

I had so much fun with Canvasbacks that morning I’ve been looking for them on Glover’s pond in early spring for twelve years now but I’ve never had a repeat performance.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

When it comes to Canvasback agonistic behavior appearances can be deceiving.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90823,"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":[5,334,364,2782,392,394],"tags":[25,415,2907,70,136,140,2162,211,311],"class_list":["post-90822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-canvasbacks","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","tag-aggression","tag-agonistic-behavior","tag-aythya-valisineria","tag-canvasback","tag-feeding","tag-fighting","tag-glovers-pond","tag-male","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/canavasback-5531-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-nCS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90822","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=90822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}