{"id":91454,"date":"2020-11-16T06:09:50","date_gmt":"2020-11-16T13:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=91454"},"modified":"2020-11-16T06:09:50","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T13:09:50","slug":"female-merlin-no-way-to-treat-a-newcomer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/16\/female-merlin-no-way-to-treat-a-newcomer\/","title":{"rendered":"Female Merlin – No Way To Treat A Newcomer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Within a span of just a few minutes three of our resident birds, including two raptors, gave this recently arrived female Merlin a very hard time so I figured she deserved a more welcoming greeting from another Utah resident. That would be me in today’s post.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Four days ago this was my first look at her. Merlin’s don’t breed in Utah so she’d either have recently migrated here for the winter or she was just passing through. It was a cold morning and she was minding her own business as she warmed up in the sun. I spent quite a bit of time with her but in the cold she gave me very few poses so for this shot I’d removed my teleconverter in case she took off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Eventually an immature Red-tailed Hawk came in from out of nowhere and chased her off but she launched away from me so I’m only including the takeoff shot for documentation purposes.<\/p>\n

Next she landed on a nearby rabbitbrush but that low perch didn’t suit her so she took off again and landed on a more elevated bare branch. While she was there she was mercilessly harassed by a Black-billed Magpie followed by a very aggressive male American Kestrel. I documented both of those attacks<\/a><\/span><\/span> in an earlier post.<\/p>\n

Despite how badly she was treated I hope she decides to stick around for the winter. In my book she’ll always be welcome.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Within a span of just a few minutes three of our resident birds, including two raptors, gave this recently arrived female Merlin a very hard time so I figured she deserved a more welcoming greeting from another Utah resident. That would be me in today’s post.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91455,"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":[334,2782,2221],"tags":[2222,1008,137,1228,2738,311],"class_list":["post-91454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-merlin-diurnal-raptors","tag-falco-columbarius","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-female","tag-merlin","tag-takeoff","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/merlin-8496-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-nN4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91454","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=91454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}