{"id":9635,"date":"2023-02-22T23:28:35","date_gmt":"2023-02-23T06:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/?p=9635"},"modified":"2023-02-22T23:28:38","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T06:28:38","slug":"birds-in-flight-south-platte-february-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/22\/birds-in-flight-south-platte-february-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Birds In Flight, South Platte, February 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Winter is always a good time to view ducks and other waterbirds along the South Platte River. Now for something a little different. Mallards and Canada Geese are really plentiful species along the river. As a result, I don’t usually make photographs of these birds. However, this month I did find one female Mallard that was preening herself and flapping her wings at the riverside. I could not resist making some images of this one individual duck.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"2788-0114-Female-Mallard-Swept-Wing-No-1-South-Platte\"
Female Mallard Swept Wing No 1, South Platte.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Those blue tail feathers are really striking in the above image. Here is another image with swept back wings.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"2788-0116-Female-Mallard-Swept-Wing-No-2-South-Platte\"
Female Mallard Swept Wing No 2, South Platte.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Here is another image that shows equally spectacular wing detail of this magnificent bird.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"2788-0128-Female-Mallard-Flapping-Wings-South-Platte\"
Female Mallard Flapping Wings, South Platte.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

On another morning, I found this Canada Goose that was flapping its wings while standing in the water. This might prove interesting. There were several geese in the area, so I may get lucky to catch some geese in flight.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"2793-0005-Canada-Goose-Flapping-Wings-South-Platte\"
Canada Goose Flapping Wings, South Platte.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Sure enough, the flock of geese took flight. I managed to capture a whole sequence of images. Here is the leading pair of geese taking flight.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"2793-0017-Canada-Geese-Taking-Flight-South-Platte\"
Canada Geese Taking Flight, South Platte.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I continued tracking the geese, with this one being the last in the sequence.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"2793-0019-Canada-Geese-In-Flight-South-Platte\"
Canada Geese In Flight, South Platte.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Later that morning, I was watching a male Buffelhead duck in the river, when he suddenly decided to take flight. These are small ducks, so the move very fast. Here is an image soon after he leaves the water, paddling with his feet.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"2793-0049-Buffelhead-Duck-Taking-Flight-South-Platte\"
Buffelhead Duck Taking Flight, South Platte.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A few moments later, he had successful taken flight. Here is one image as he was fully out of the water.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"2793-0055-Buffelhead-Duck-In-Flight-South-Platte\"
Buffelhead Duck In Flight, South Platte.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It is always a challenge to capture images of birds in flight. So I was happy with these few images from this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winter is always a good time to view ducks and other waterbirds along the South Platte River. Now for something a little different. Mallards and Canada Geese are really plentiful species along the river. As a result, I don’t usually make photographs of these birds. However, this month I did find one female Mallard that […]<\/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":[1674,1480,307,1362,67,529,25,1020],"class_list":{"0":"post-9635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-general","7":"tag-buffelheads","8":"tag-canada-geese","9":"tag-ducks","10":"tag-flight","11":"tag-geese","12":"tag-mallard","13":"tag-river","14":"tag-south-platte"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMatQ-2vp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9635","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=9635"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9639,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9635\/revisions\/9639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}