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Three days ago in the mountains I took hundreds of photos of a dripping-wet male Yellow Warbler as he was preening after bathing. Yesterday while I was reviewing my photos more carefully I noticed I’d captured something quite unusual in one of them.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/yellow-warbler-5929-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"yellow-warbler-5929-ron-dudley\\"")
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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 During his incredibly frenetic preening activities he raised his rump feathers covering his preen gland to provide him access to its oil which he gets on his beak and face and then smears on his plumage while preening. The fortunate angle I was shooting from allowed me to actually see his preen gland in this photo.<\/p>\n Truth be told my heart skipped a beat when I realized what I’d captured. In my 14 years of photographing birds I’d only documented the preen gland of a bird two times but in each case much larger birds were involved – a Black-crowned Night Heron <\/a><\/span><\/span>and a Belted Kingfisher<\/a><\/span><\/span>. I’d never before captured the preen gland of a much smaller songbird, especially one as small as a Yellow Warbler.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n A huge crop of the same photo allows us a much better look at the nipple (papilla) of the bilobed gland marked with a red arrow.<\/p>\n Lots of things had to come together to get this shot and most of them involved luck. My timing and shooting angle had to be just right during the microsecond he exposed the gland. If the sun hadn’t been low in the sky no light would have reached the gland so all we’d be able to see is a black void beneath the raised feathers. His preening and drying activities were frenetically fast so if I hadn’t had a very high shutter speed all we’d see is a blurry mess. And then I had to notice the gland in my photo. I damn near missed it.<\/p>\n I took 264 photos of this preening warbler in less than 3 minutes and many of them are both interesting and entertaining and every last one of them appears to be sharp so I’m sure I’ll be posting some more of them in then near future.<\/p>\n But I’ll be honest, this is the one that excites me most. I guess that’s the biology teacher in me coming out.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Or the preen gland of any songbird for that matter? Well, now’s your chance.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/yellow-warbler-5929-huge-crop-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"yellow-warbler-5929-huge-crop-ron-dudley\\"")
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