{"id":13139,"date":"2015-03-30T09:30:17","date_gmt":"2015-03-30T16:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=13139"},"modified":"2015-03-30T09:30:17","modified_gmt":"2015-03-30T16:30:17","slug":"bluebirds-and-shrike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=13139","title":{"rendered":"Bluebirds and shrike"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I watched insectivores hunting in a field: Mountain Bluebirds and Northern Shrikes.<\/p>\n<p>Two weeks ago, the treat was the <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=12953\" title=\"Anniversary bluebirds\">Western Bluebird<\/a>, which sports an orange breast and shoulders. The breast of the Mountain Bluebird is powder blue (male) or grey (female).<\/p>\n<p>A male (left) Mountain Bluebird and female (right) watch for insects from a fence.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13142\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/mountainbluebird150329ds.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>From such a perch each will swoop down and capture a bug.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13145\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/mountainbluebird150329as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Unexpected was a sight of Mountain Bluebirds and a Shrike on adjacent fence posts. While they all hunt insects, the shrike will also take small birds. Indeed, the bluebirds seem to be eyeing the shrike warily.\u00a0<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13140\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/bluebird_shrike150329s.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I managed to get close enough to get a couple of portraits. First the (male) Mountain Bluebird,<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13143\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/mountainbluebird150329cs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>then the Northern Shrike.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13141\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/shrike150329as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Yesterday I watched insectivores hunting in a field: Mountain Bluebirds and Northern Shrikes. Two weeks ago, the treat was the Western Bluebird, which sports an orange breast and shoulders. The breast of the Mountain Bluebird is powder blue (male) &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=13139\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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-13139","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\/13139","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=13139"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13150,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13139\/revisions\/13150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}