{"id":98253,"date":"2021-05-14T05:13:43","date_gmt":"2021-05-14T11:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=98253"},"modified":"2021-05-14T06:52:23","modified_gmt":"2021-05-14T12:52:23","slug":"male-belted-kingfisher-diving-on-a-fish-and-then-eating-his-catch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/14\/male-belted-kingfisher-diving-on-a-fish-and-then-eating-his-catch\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Belted Kingfisher Diving On A Fish And Then Eating His Catch"},"content":{"rendered":"

And believe it or not, this time he brought the fish close to me before gobbling it down instead of carrying it far away like he’s done repeatedly in the past.<\/p>\n

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Yesterday morning I spent some more time in the mountains with what is almost certainly the same male Belted Kingfisher I’ve posted other photos of recently. Here he’s fishing from a dead branch overhanging one of his favorite fishing spots on the stream.<\/p>\n

He wasn’t very close and the background was busy so I wanted diving shots. Based on his position relative to the water below him I anticipated that his eventual dive on a fish might be an unusually steep one, which meant that shooting horizontally I’d have to leave him as much room at the bottom of the frame as possible to give me a better chance of not cutting off body parts.<\/p>\n

In other words, I’d most likely have to sacrifice the takeoff shots to get diving shots, a tradeoff I was willing to make.<\/p>\n

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This time I succeeded and so did he. He’s acceptably sharp, I like his steep diving angle and I didn’t amputate any body parts. I do wish I had light in his eye but at this angle to the sun the laws of physics put the kibosh on that.<\/p>\n

And yes, he caught the fish. A few days earlier I watched as he caught six fish in a short period of time but each time he carried it far away before eating it so I couldn’t get any decent photos. This time I expected him to do the same but he…<\/p>\n

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surprised me by landing close to me with the fish.<\/p>\n

Soon after he landed he shook water off of his head and upper body. I always get a kick out of these ‘upside down head’ poses if I can get them sharp. The head and bill movement is extremely fast but this time I had enough shutter speed to freeze the action. He must have had a pretty tight grip on that slippery fish.<\/p>\n

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At this point he’d shaken water off of his head but most of his body was still wet.<\/p>\n

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So he made a half-hearted attempt at shaking water off of his wings and tail.<\/p>\n

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The next order of business was to swallow the slippery fish without dropping it, something I’ve seen happen to kingfishers several times. He seemed to be having more trouble than usual getting the fish lined up to go down his throat head first. He worked at it for a while and then…<\/p>\n

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he took a short break.<\/p>\n

See that white branch at lower left? Well, it isn’t a branch – it’s flying poop. He obviously felt the need to relieve himself before he could get the fish lined up in his bill and swallow it. You’d think he’d know that his defiant act of defecation would force me to find another spot in the frame to place my copyright watermark.<\/p>\n

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Then he went back to work on the fish. Here he’s finally getting it…<\/p>\n

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lined up in his bill. Getting that done allowed him to…<\/p>\n

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swallow it quickly.<\/p>\n

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The next order of business was a highly energetic and full-bodied rouse that…<\/p>\n

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seriously messed up his hairdo.<\/p>\n

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Some birds, kingfishers included, can be pretty predictable with their feeding locations and the timing of their feeding routine but this guy marches to the beat of his own drummer. I’ve found it to be impossible to accurately predict when he’ll be fishing in this area. At least as often as not I strike out when I attempt to find him but occasionally I get lucky.<\/p>\n

Yesterday was one of those times.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: Image techs for most of these photos are at or near 1\/5000 – 1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender<\/em><\/p>\n

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And believe it or not, this time he brought the fish close to me before gobbling it down instead of carrying it far away like he’s done repeatedly in the past.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98259,"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":[2853,6,334,392],"tags":[2329,5742,1239,141,144,146,211,2330,994,720,311],"class_list":["post-98253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belted-kingfishers","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-belted-kingfisher","tag-defecating","tag-diving","tag-fish","tag-fishing","tag-flight","tag-male","tag-megaceryle-alcyon","tag-rouse","tag-swallowing-fish","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/belted-kingfisher-3226-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-pyJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98253","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=98253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}