{"id":122111,"date":"2024-02-27T04:01:18","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T11:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/?p=122111"},"modified":"2024-02-27T04:35:30","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T11:35:30","slug":"drake-common-goldeneyes-in-winter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/2024\/02\/27\/drake-common-goldeneyes-in-winter\/","title":{"rendered":"Drake Common Goldeneyes In Winter"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I took this photo of two drake Common Goldeneyes at Bear River MBR<\/span><\/a> almost two years ago, I was laughing as I hit my shutter button. I couldn’t help myself.<\/p>\n

\"TwoTwo drake Common Goldeneyes in winter \u2013 Nikon D500, f7.1, 1\/2000, ISO 500, Nikkor 500mm VR with 1.4x TC, natural light<\/span><\/p>\n

The mohawk that the drake goldeneye on the left was sporting cracked me up. Maybe I should just call it a faux-hawk. The green-headed diving duck certainly looked punked out. That faux-hawk struck me as funny then, and it still does today.<\/p>\n

The drake Common Goldeneye may have been signaling the other drake that he had gotten too close. Perhaps he was just acting like a tough guy. I will never know for sure.<\/p>\n

I just know that the drake’s faux-hawk made me laugh out loud. It was probably a good thing I was alone that day, and that no one else was around. Thankfully the ducks didn’t seem bothered by my laughter at all.<\/p>\n

I’m going off track for a little bit here.<\/p>\n

I went through my late February images for all years last night and noticed something odd: I’ve never been in the field taking images on February 27th. Not once. As much as I wish I could rectify that, today’s forecast looks horrible. Cloudy, possible snow showers, and high winds aren’t great for finding birds, let alone photographing them.<\/p>\n

Come to think of it, I’ve never been in the field on February 29th either. Of course that only comes around every 4 years!<\/p>\n

Back to the Common Goldeneyes<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I hope the faux-hawk on the drake goldeneye makes you all laugh. Right now I think we could all use good laughs every day! I know I do.<\/p>\n

Life is<\/em> good.<\/p>\n

Mia<\/p>\n

Click here<\/span><\/a> to see more of my Common Goldeneye photos plus facts and information about this species.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I took this photo of two drake Common Goldeneyes at Bear River MBR almost two years ago, I was laughing as I hit my shutter button. I couldn’t help myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":122108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"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":""},"categories":[124,27,1148,962,26],"tags":[4004,4053,4238,4520,4483,1129,126,14767,6348,5586,4062,4094,14766,3996,2063,4095,373],"class_list":["post-122111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","category-avian","category-box-elder-county-utah","category-common-goldeneyes","category-utah","tag-adult","tag-breeding-plumage","tag-bucephala-clangula","tag-common-goldeneye","tag-drake","tag-duck","tag-ducks-2","tag-faux-hawk","tag-goldeneye","tag-goldeneyes","tag-male","tag-marsh","tag-mohawk","tag-water","tag-waterfowl","tag-wetlands","tag-winter"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/common-goldeneye-drakes-winter-mia-mcpherson-7071.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p11Mom-vLx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":107941,"url":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/2022\/11\/12\/my-first-of-season-common-goldeneye\/","url_meta":{"origin":122111,"position":0},"title":"My First Of Season Common Goldeneye","author":"Mia McPherson","date":"November 12, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"I found my first of season Common Goldeneye near a stand of rushes while walking around a local pond after a light skiff of snow had fallen overnight.","rel":"","context":"In "Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge"","block_context":{"text":"Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/category\/locations\/utah\/bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"First of season drake Common Goldeneye in Salt Lake County, Utah","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/common-goldeneye-fos-mia-mcpherson-3471.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/common-goldeneye-fos-mia-mcpherson-3471.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, 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McPherson","date":"January 22, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Just a quick post this morning of a photo of a 1st winter Common Goldeneye drake with a crawdad in his bill at my neighborhood pond taken last year.","rel":"","context":"In "Birds"","block_context":{"text":"Birds","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/category\/avian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"1st winter Common Goldeneye drake with a crawdad, Salt Lake County, Utah","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/common-goldeneye-drake-first-winter-crawdad-mia-mcpherson-2757.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/common-goldeneye-drake-first-winter-crawdad-mia-mcpherson-2757.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, 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I didn't have my camera with me, so I wasn't able to photograph him.","rel":"","context":"In "Birds"","block_context":{"text":"Birds","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/category\/avian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Drake Common Goldeneye settling down, Salt Lake County, Utah","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/common-goldeneye-drake-winter-mia-mcpherson-7243.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/common-goldeneye-drake-winter-mia-mcpherson-7243.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/common-goldeneye-drake-winter-mia-mcpherson-7243.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/common-goldeneye-drake-winter-mia-mcpherson-7243.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}