{"id":10244,"date":"2014-04-14T15:03:16","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T22:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=10244"},"modified":"2014-04-17T12:15:57","modified_gmt":"2014-04-17T19:15:57","slug":"puffed-blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=10244","title":{"rendered":"Puffed blue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For a few weeks, there have been Mountain Bluebirds around, but it wasn&#8217;t until this morning that I managed to get close enough for good pictures. A couple was perched on adjacent bushes from which they scanned for insects in different directions.<\/p>\n<p>The female bluebird has understated colours, which is good for blending in.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10246\" style=\"font-size: 16px;\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/bluebird140414bs.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The male bluebird isn&#8217;t understated. Despite this, the female\u00a0chooses him, not for his looks, but for his ability to provide her with a good nesting cavity. So, it is unclear how he happened to evolve such an opulent outfit.\u00a0<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10245\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/bluebird140414cs.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As I watched, he looked my way and puffed his feathers.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10257\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/bluebird140414as.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And if a puffed bluebird were not sufficiently grand, a muskrat paid a visit in the early morning light.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10248\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/muskrat140414s.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; For a few weeks, there have been Mountain Bluebirds around, but it wasn&#8217;t until this morning that I managed to get close enough for good pictures. A couple was perched on adjacent bushes from which they scanned for insects &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=10244\">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":[9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-mammals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10244","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=10244"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10277,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10244\/revisions\/10277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}