{"id":49732,"date":"2017-12-08T05:44:31","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T12:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/?p=49732"},"modified":"2024-07-10T19:12:18","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T00:12:18","slug":"mountain-chickadee-in-ophir-canyon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/2017\/12\/08\/mountain-chickadee-in-ophir-canyon\/","title":{"rendered":"Mountain Chickadee in Ophir Canyon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week while photographing birds in Ophir Canyon I was able to take a short series of photos of a Mountain Chickadee perched in a juniper right after I photographed some bushtits<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"MountainMountain Chickadee perched in Juniper – Nikon D500, f7.1, 1\/1250, ISO 500, +0.7 EV, Nikkor 500mm VR with 1.4x TC, natural light<\/span><\/p>\n

The sky was a plain blue, the sun was a bit higher than I care for and the chickadee was further away than I like but I couldn’t resist photographing the bird because I liked how it was framed by the juniper and I love having opportunities to aim my lens at these small, white, gray and black birds that move crazy fast.<\/p>\n

Some of the other birds I have photographed in this canyon in the West Desert are Red-tailed Hawks, Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jays, Steller’s Jays, Golden Eagles and Mountain Bluebirds and the first mammals I photographed there when I visited Utah from Florida in 2008 was a small herd of Mule Deer.<\/p>\n

One of the problems with photographing in Ophir Canyon and other canyons on the west side of the mountain ranges here is that it takes a while for the sun to rise high enough in the morning to reach the floor of the canyon which can mean that the light is somewhat harsh by the time a subject can be lit up well.<\/p>\n

Chickadees are reputedly named for their calls which sound like “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” and they do sound like that but I can detect a slight difference between Mountain Chickadees and the Black-capped Chickadees that also live in my area of Utah.<\/p>\n

Listen to the calls and song of Mountain Chickadees here<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

I often see and hear Black-capped Chickadees when I am at home or in my neighborhood but I don’t recall ever seeing a Mountain Chickadee at home. Maybe I just need to look a bit harder for them. Where I do see them most often is up in canyons and while in the mountains that I travel to in Utah, Montana and Idaho.<\/p>\n

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

Mia<\/p>\n

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

Last week while photographing birds in Ophir Canyon I was able to take a short series of photos of a Mountain Chickadee perched in a juniper right after I photographed some bushtits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":130449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,2782,4886,358,26,1314],"tags":[4004,2069,3940,6273,6274,3914,2780,4104,2779,373],"class_list":["post-49732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-avian","category-mountain-chickadees","category-ophir-canyon","category-tooele-county","category-utah","category-west-desert-utah","tag-adult","tag-blue-sky","tag-canyon","tag-chickadee","tag-chickadees","tag-juniper","tag-mountain-chickadee","tag-perched","tag-poecile-gambeli","tag-winter"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t