{"id":8876,"date":"2020-04-05T22:59:57","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T05:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/?p=8876"},"modified":"2020-04-05T23:00:01","modified_gmt":"2020-04-06T06:00:01","slug":"south-platte-bird-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/05\/south-platte-bird-life\/","title":{"rendered":"South Platte Bird Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This afternoon, we headed out to do some birding along the South Platte River. In one of the nearby ponds, we found a mating pair of Mallards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2460-0005-Mallard-Mating-Pair\"
Mallard, Mating Pair.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

While making some images, the female Mallard started flapping her wings. I was fortunate to capture a few images. In this image, we can see the purple speculum, which is a distinctive feature of Mallards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2460-0008-Female-Mallard-Flapping-WIngs\"
Female Mallard, Flapping Wings.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When we arrived at the river, a pair of Common Mergansers were swimming up stream. Later we found the pair on one of the rock, busy preening themselves. This is one if the images that I captured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2460-0022-Common-Merganser-Mating-Pair\"
Common Merganser, Mating Pair.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The male had long since finished preening himself. The female had been preening for some 15 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A female Mallard was swimming past the rock. The male Merganser seemed to say “Stay Away From Our Rock” to the Mallard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2460-0043-Stay-Away-From-Our-Rock\"
Stay Away From Our Rock<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

One of the many bikers had walked down to the river. I captured this image of his reflection in the water<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2460-0058-Biker-Reflection\"
Biker Reflection.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Angela called out that a Cormorant was in flight. This was the only image that I managed to capture, after the bird had flown past me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2460-0063-Cormorant-In-Flight\"
Cormorant, In Flight.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

We only saw one Canada Goose along this stretch of the river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2460-0064-Just-This-One-Canada-Goose\"
Just This One Canada Goose.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Heading back to the truck, we passed the pair of Mergansers. By now they had split off onto two separate rocks. The male had moved to an adjacent rock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2460-0067-Common-Mergansers-On-Separate-Rocks\"
Common Mergansers, On Separate Rocks.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The mail may have moved to the adjacent rock to get away from the shaking of the rock caused by the vigorous preening of the female!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This afternoon, we headed out to do some birding along the South Platte River. In one of the nearby ponds, we found a mating pair of Mallards. While making some images, the female Mallard started flapping her wings. I was fortunate to capture a few images. In this image, we can see the purple speculum, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"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":[498,1582,83,529,1685,225,25,1020],"class_list":{"0":"post-8876","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-general","7":"tag-birds","8":"tag-cormorant","9":"tag-goose","10":"tag-mallard","11":"tag-merganser","12":"tag-reflection","13":"tag-river","14":"tag-south-platte"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMatQ-2ja","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8876","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=8876"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8878,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8876\/revisions\/8878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}