{"id":99174,"date":"2021-06-12T05:49:51","date_gmt":"2021-06-12T11:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=99174"},"modified":"2021-06-12T05:58:24","modified_gmt":"2021-06-12T11:58:24","slug":"yesterdays-gray-catbird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/12\/yesterdays-gray-catbird\/","title":{"rendered":"Yesterday’s Gray Catbird"},"content":{"rendered":"

My first decent catbird photos of the year.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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’ve been hearing and seeing Gray Catbirds in the mountains for weeks now. But they’ve been taking the ‘cat’ part of their name far too seriously as they consistently play cat and mouse games with me so decent photos of them have been as elusive as they are.<\/p>\n

But yesterday morning this one came in close and mostly out in the open for long enough to give me a few (very few) shots before ‘he’…<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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

dove down into the bushes to a spot where I suspect he thought he was hidden from my prying lens. But by skootching my lens and body as far forward in the cab of my pickup as possible I was barely able to get photos of him that were mostly unobstructed and I took a lot of them.<\/p>\n

Even though I noticed little evidence that he was wet he acted just like a bird that was grooming after a bath. He did a lot of shaking, preening and…<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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

scratching. I wonder what it is about birds that so often makes them open their beaks very wide, almost like they’re yawning, while they’re scratching under their chins.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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

But much of his time was spent shaking. There was water almost directly below him so I’m thinking he must have had a recent bath. He’d just had sufficient time to dry off enough that I couldn’t tell for sure that he was still damp.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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

Occasionally he broke out into brief bouts of calling but most of his time was spent preening.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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

The rich chestnut-colored undertail coverts of adult catbirds are usually so well hidden that many casual observers never see them and aren’t even aware that they exist. But the contortions this bird went through allowed me to see them many times.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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

Those chestnut feathers are actually fairly extensive, especially considering how unusual it is for us to see them. In the past some blog followers who see catbirds regularly have said that that they were unaware of the chestnut color until they’d seen my photos documenting it.<\/p>\n

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I was actually relieved when he finally flew off. I was in such an uncomfortable position pasted against my steering wheel it took me some time to recover when I could relax again. Having a bad back sure didn’t help the situation.<\/p>\n

Hopefully next time I get a catbird in my viewfinder the setting will be less cluttered than this one but it’s typical habitat for them so I was pleased to get the shots I did.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

My first decent catbird photos of the year.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99178,"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":[393,334,3523],"tags":[3526,3525,255,5796,5797,5798,311],"class_list":["post-99174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bathing-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-gray-catbird","tag-dumetella-carolinensis","tag-gray-catbird","tag-preening","tag-red-rump","tag-red-undertail-coverts","tag-singing-and-calling","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/gray-catbird-1117-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-pNA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99174","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=99174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}