{"id":10038,"date":"2014-03-18T16:29:54","date_gmt":"2014-03-18T23:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=10038"},"modified":"2014-03-19T09:05:25","modified_gmt":"2014-03-19T16:05:25","slug":"stealthy-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=10038","title":{"rendered":"Stealthy birds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In last two days, I have watched two remarkably stealthy birds. These are not the frenetic little scaredy-cats\u00a0that flit from branch to branch. These are the largish birds that move in a stately, even lethargic, manner. The two I watched were a Ruffed Grouse and a Great Blue Heron. Now, I suspect that the reasons for their measured paces differ. The grouse is probably trying to blend in so as to not attract predators; the heron is trying to blend in so as to avoid being spotted by its prey.<\/p>\n<p>A Ruffed Grouse remains inconspicuous by moving slowly. However, against snow, it just cannot blend in.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10043\" style=\"font-size: 16px;\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/grouse140317as.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When it moves into more salubrious surroundings, it can almost vanish, especially when seen from a distance. This appears to be the same female that was reported a month ago in <a title=\"Replacement grouse\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=9835\">replacement grouse<\/a>.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10041\" style=\"font-size: 16px;\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/grouse140317bs.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The heron was observed to move even more slowly. It did move along the shallows, but would pause for long periods and slowly look around (presumably for fish).<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10040\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/heron140418as.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>On a few occasions, I obtained a view that might correspond to the last thing a fish, or a\u00a0<a title=\"Vole begone\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=8379\">vole<\/a> might see.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10039\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/heron140418bs.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; In last two days, I have watched two remarkably stealthy birds. These are not the frenetic little scaredy-cats\u00a0that flit from branch to branch. These are the largish birds that move in a stately, even lethargic, manner. The two I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=10038\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10038"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10048,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10038\/revisions\/10048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}