![\"Bald](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/bald-eagle-20081.jpg\" "\\"bald-eagle-20081")
<\/a><\/p>\nA banded adult Bald Eagle performing a wing stretch in the elm tree in my side yard.<\/p>\n
This was one of several eagles that roosted in my tree in midwinter for four or five years running. The pose is unusual for an eagle and the bird is in my own yard so how could I not include it.<\/p>\n
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![\"Cinnamon](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/cinnamon-teal-0760.jpg\" "\\"cinnamon-teal-0760")
<\/p>\n
A Cinnamon Teal x Green-winged Teal hybrid performing a wing flap at Bear River MBR.<\/p>\n
This is a hybrid mix that isn’t often seen and I like both the setting and the pose. Large prints of this photo and the Black-billed Magpie photo above hang in the new Eccles Wildlife Center Auditorium at Farmington Bay.<\/p>\n
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![\"Striking](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/northern-harrier-9202.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-9202")
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Two Northern Harriers in a nasty fight over the remains of a Mallard mostly hidden behind the bird on the right. Yes, all those puffy white things on the ice are Mallard feathers.<\/p>\n
The talons of one harrier are actually buried in the chest of the other. This is likely to be the only photo with clipped wings that makes it into my “Favorite Photos from the Distant Past” series but I had to include it because of the timing of the action I captured. The speed of the talon strike was so incredibly fast I didn’t even know it happened until I looked at my images at home.<\/p>\n
I took an entire series of photos of harriers fighting over the Mallard but many of them will never see the light of day because I’m not sure the harriers weren’t baited. It’s possible that another photographer had placed the Mallard in a photogenic spot on the ice early that morning before I arrived. This is one of the photos I’d already posted on a bird photography critique forum (NPN) before I became suspicious of the possible baiting.<\/p>\n
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Last night as I lay in bed long before midnight after being rudely awakened by #!@%ing fireworks I figuratively gave 2020 a swift kick in the ass and slammed the door behind it. We probably have at least 20 more days of misery before things begin to get better but I have at least some hope that they eventually will. For all of us.<\/p>\n
Happy New Year everyone!<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ringing in the new year with older images. Each of the following six photos was published in the two month period between December 1, 2010 and January 31, 2011.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2728,"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":[355,334,363,357,16,394,405,5460,341,359],"tags":[42,43,2448,57,85,5545,4011,159,234,251],"class_list":["post-93230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bald-eagles","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","category-cinnamon-teals","category-photography-ethics","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-great-horned-owls-owls","category-green-winged-teals","category-northern-harriers","category-pied-billed-grebes","tag-baiting","tag-bald-eagle","tag-bird-photography-ethics","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-cinnamon-teal-green-winged-teal-hybrid","tag-eccles-wildlife-center-at-farmington-bay","tag-favorite-bird-photos","tag-great-horned-owl","tag-northern-harrier","tag-pied-billed-grebe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/northern-harrier-9202.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-ofI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93230","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=93230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Great](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/great-horned-owl-54561.jpg\" "\\"great-horned-owl-54561")
<\/p>\n![\"Magpie](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/black-billed-magpie-6445-1200pxl1.jpg\" "\\"black-billed-magpie-6445")
<\/p>\n![\"Escaping](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/pied-billed-grebe-3161.jpg\" "\\"pied-billed-grebe-3161")
<\/p>\n