{"id":97961,"date":"2021-05-06T04:16:14","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T10:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=97961"},"modified":"2021-05-06T12:33:55","modified_gmt":"2021-05-06T18:33:55","slug":"white-faced-ibis-banking-and-flaring-in-flight-prior-to-landing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/06\/white-faced-ibis-banking-and-flaring-in-flight-prior-to-landing\/","title":{"rendered":"White-faced Ibis Banking And Flaring In Flight Prior To Landing"},"content":{"rendered":"

And a wolverine was seen, photographed and videotaped on Antelope Island two days ago.<\/p>\n

Sometimes everything just falls into place. Yesterday morning I spent some time at an impoundment at Bear River MBR that had large numbers of American White Pelicans and White-faced Ibis feeding in the shallow water. Many of the Ibis were flying in and leaving at unpredictable times and I wanted ibis flight shots so I concentrated on them and mostly ignored the pelicans.<\/p>\n

Typically as an Ibis approached it was coming in head-on which isn’t the best shooting angle, especially on such a dark bird.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 400, 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

I knew my best chance for shots I liked was if I could catch one banking and flaring just before it landed on the water. But that’s a very difficult flight shot because the banking\/flaring maneuver also makes them change direction quickly and unpredictably so they’re nearly impossible to track and keep in focus with a long lens. But I kept trying and eventually succeeded with this photo and a few others like it.<\/p>\n

Ibis are known for the iridescence on their dorsal plumage when seen in the right light but this shot reveals that they have ventral iridescence too. The morning sun was still low in the sky so with this dramatic flight posture the entire ventral surface of the ibis is well- lit and I got a near-perfect head position that allowed light in the eye and a good look at their namesake “white face”. I think the textures and colors of the water background are a plus.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A different composition of the same photo allows a closer look at the bird.<\/p>\n

I actually got an entire series of sharp shots as the ibis approached and then flared but it’ll take me some time to go through them and get them processed. I’ll likely post more of them in the near future.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

OK, lets change gears to end this post. I just had to mention this incredibly rare event.<\/p>\n

Two days ago a wolverine was seen, photographed and videotaped on Antelope Island<\/a><\/span><\/span>. A wolverine on Antelope Island is so very far out of its typical range and habitat I assumed the photos had been faked when I first saw them on social media. But later in the morning I saw a video of the same wolverine and eventually Utah DWR basically confirmed it really was a wolverine and it really was on the island.<\/p>\n

It isn’t hyperbole for me to say that a confirmed sighting of a wolverine on the island surprises me nearly as much as a similar sighting of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker or even Sasquatch. Even now my jaw drops when I think about it.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, Adam Brewerton, the Utah DWR biologist quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune article in the link above, is a former student of mine. As a member of my Utah Wildlife\/Zoology class I would have told Adam years ago about an incredibly rare Utah wolverine found in the eastern Uinta Mountains near Vernal in the late 70’s. The person who spotted that wolverine “didn’t recognize what it was” so he shot it and took it to Vernal to have it identified. Back then wolverines hadn’t been seen in Utah for decades so there were no laws to protect them and the jerk who shot it wasn’t prosecuted.<\/p>\n

Today wolverines are protected by state law.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

And a wolverine was seen, photographed and videotaped on Antelope Island two days ago. No shit!<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97965,"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":[3,338,334,8,972],"tags":[5734,1124,49,146,186,973,311,715,5733,5732],"class_list":["post-97961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-white-faced-ibis-wading-birds","tag-adam-brewerton","tag-banking","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-flight","tag-iridescence","tag-plegadis-chihi","tag-utah-2","tag-white-faced-ibis","tag-wolverine-in-utah","tag-wolverine-on-antelope-island"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/white-faced-ibis-1626b-horizontal-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-pu1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97961","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=97961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}