{"id":98620,"date":"2021-05-25T04:49:42","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T10:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=98620"},"modified":"2021-05-25T05:57:22","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T11:57:22","slug":"some-recent-birds-and-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/25\/some-recent-birds-and-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Recent Birds And Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

A cross section of some of the subjects I’ll aim my lens at while I’m in the field. With varying degrees of success.<\/p>\n

Each of the following photos was taken within the last week.<\/em><\/p>\n

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A Rock Wren. On a rock of course.<\/p>\n

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And speaking of wrens.<\/p>\n

This spring I’ve been watching this nesting cavity in an aspen tree in the west desert mountains for any signs of nesting activity. Until a few days ago I’d seen no activity and no nesting material was visible in the cavity entrance but on my last trip to the area nesting material was actually spilling out of the opening. I’m pretty sure the current residents are wrens, probably House Wrens.<\/p>\n

I’ll photograph House Wrens nesting in a natural cavity in the mountains any ol’ day of the week so with any luck I may be posting some interesting photos of them sometime soon. Or maybe not, you know how bird photography goes.<\/p>\n

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An adult Red-tailed Hawk perched on a gnarly old fence post soon after sunrise in the west desert. Here ‘he’s’ in the midst of a rouse signaling imminent takeoff. I had high hopes of getting quality takeoff and flight shots of this bird because I was at a good distance for flight shots, I liked both the background and the perch and the light was exceptionally nice.<\/p>\n

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But the hawk had other ideas. In mid-rouse he turned on his perch and took off away from me, effectively putting the kibosh on my plans. .<\/p>\n

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Yesterday I posted a photo of a lizard that I hoped my readers could ID and said I took that photo while I was “waiting at a flowering bush” for hummingbirds to show up. This Wax Currant is that flowering bush and hummingbirds never did make an appearance but this raggedy California Tortoiseshell Butterfly did so I snapped a few photos.<\/p>\n

Life is hard out there and this beat-up butterfly is ample evidence of that harsh reality.<\/p>\n

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A subadult Peregrine Falcon that took off at a higher angle than I anticipated so I amputated body parts in most, though not all<\/a><\/span><\/span>, of my flight shots. I sure wish I had a do-over on this bird.<\/p>\n

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Some fungi growing out of an old cottonwood tree in the west desert mountains. In my usual birding haunts I rarely see this many ‘shrooms growing in one place so of course I took some photos. I estimate that this cluster, slightly past its prime, was about 2 1\/2’ tall so it was hard to miss on the side of a large tree.<\/p>\n

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A Song Sparrow about to enjoy a drink from a shallow pond. I just like the ambiance of the image.<\/p>\n

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So that’s about how the last week went for me in the field. If I include some of the other photos I posted recently I got a few hits (mostly singles but also an extra base or two), quite a few strikeouts and foul balls and no home runs.<\/p>\n

But collectively some runs were scored, I enjoyed the game and home runs are always possible so I keep playing.<\/p>\n

Ron.<\/p>\n

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

A cross section of some of the subjects I’ll aim my lens at while I’m in the field. With varying degrees of success.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98628,"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":[6,334,4202,4592,582,450,5753,523],"tags":[5765,5769,5766,5764,5768,1572,290,5767,311],"class_list":["post-98620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-butterlies","category-house-wren-wrens","category-peregrine-falcons","category-red-tailed-hawks","category-rock-wren","category-song-sparrows","tag-adult-red-tailed-hawk","tag-baseball-analogy","tag-california-tortoiseshell-butterfly","tag-house-wren-nest-cavity","tag-mushrooms","tag-rock-wren","tag-song-sparrow","tag-subadult-peregrine-falcon","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/song-sparrow-8408-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-pEE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98620","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=98620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}