{"id":10436,"date":"2025-08-12T16:39:44","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T23:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/?p=10436"},"modified":"2025-08-12T16:39:46","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T23:39:46","slug":"hunting-westerly-park-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/12\/hunting-westerly-park-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunting, Westerly Park — 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A couple of weekends ago, I headed out to Westerly Park, to see what birds I could find after a break from that location of some 4 months. Soon after arriving, I found several Western Kingbirds. Many of these were immature or juvenile birds that had been busy hunting bugs. There were about 2 or 3 birds perched in one of the trees close to the trail.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"3220-0004-Perched-Immature-Western-Kingbird-No-1-Westerly-Creek\"
Perched Immature Western Kingbird, No 1, Westerly Creek.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Kingbirds are flycatchers, so they perch on branches until bugs and insects fly past. Periodically they take flight to catch some insects, so I decided to wait and see.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"3220-0008-Perched-Immature-Western-Kingbird-No-2-Westerly-Creek\"
Perched Immature Western Kingbird, No 2, Westerly Creek.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This bird made several flights to catch insects. Maybe I would be lucky to capture some of the in-flight action?<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"3220-0012-Perched-Immature-Western-Kingbird-No-3-Westerly-Creek\"
Perched Immature Western Kingbird, No 3, Westerly Creek.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

After several attempts, I managed to capture a flight sequence. First, as the bird took flight, below.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"3220-0017-Immature-Western-Kingbird-Taking-Flight-Westerly-Creek\"
Immature Western Kingbird, Taking Flight, Westerly Creek.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Once in flight, flycatchers have very erratic flight patterns as they attempt to capture insects.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"3220-0020-Immature-Western-Kingbird-In-Flight-Westerly-Creek\"
Immature Western Kingbird, In Flight, Westerly Creek.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It proved to be difficult to capture a flight sequence, because flycatchers have extremely erratic flight patterns. However, I did manage to get a few shots.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"3220-0021-Immature-Western-Kingbird-Catching-Bugs-Westerly-Creek\"
Immature Western Kingbird, Catching Bugs, Westerly Creek.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Altogether, there must have been at least a dozen Kingbirds along the creek. After a few more attempts with these 2 or 3 Kingbirds, I decided to make my way to another part of Westerly Creek. Here I found a few Snowy Egrets that were wading along the shore. I had been watching this Egret, when it turned and started to walk in my direction. It had spotted a Crawdad at the edge of the reeds.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"3220-0045-Snowy-Egret-Catching-Crawdad-No-1-Found-Ya\"
Snowy Egret Catching Crawdad, Snowy Egret Catching Crawdad, No 1, Found Ya.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

And then caught the creature.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"3220-0046-Snowy-Egret-Catching-Crawdad-No-2-Caught-Ya\"
Snowy Egret Catching Crawdad, No 2, Caught Ya.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I captured several images as the Egret was meandering around the shore with its catch.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"3220-0053-Snowy-Egret-Catching-Crawdad-No-3\"
Snowy Egret Catching Crawdad, No 3.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

After manipulating the Crawdad in its bill, the Egret walked along the shore to my right.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"3220-0059-Snowy-Egret-Catching-Crawdad-No-4\"
Snowy Egret Catching Crawdad, No 4.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Maybe I could capture the Egret swallowing the Crawdad?<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"3220-0060-Snowy-Egret-Catching-Crawdad-No-5\"
Snowy Egret Catching Crawdad, No 5.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

No luck. There were more bushes and reeds at the side that obscured the Egret from me. No worries, I had a great afternoon seeing some different kind of bird behavior at Westerly Creek.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weekends ago, I headed out to Westerly Park, to see what birds I could find after a break from that location of some 4 months. Soon after arriving, I found several Western Kingbirds. Many of these were immature or juvenile birds that had been busy hunting bugs. There were about 2 or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[528,1721,1880,1703,1872,2028,2030,1503,1835,1936,1720,2029,1370,2031],"class_list":{"0":"post-10436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-general","7":"tag-bugs","8":"tag-crawdad","9":"tag-egret","10":"tag-flycatcher","11":"tag-hunting","12":"tag-immature","13":"tag-in-flight","14":"tag-insect","15":"tag-kingbird","16":"tag-perched","17":"tag-snowy-egret","18":"tag-taking-flight","19":"tag-westerly-creek","20":"tag-western-kingbird"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMatQ-2Ik","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10436"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10441,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10436\/revisions\/10441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}