{"id":31680,"date":"2022-04-12T18:02:37","date_gmt":"2022-04-13T01:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=31680"},"modified":"2022-04-12T18:02:37","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T01:02:37","slug":"blue-eating-hovering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=31680","title":{"rendered":"Blue eating & hovering"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This is a continuation of the previous posting: flying blue<\/a>. In that I showed Mountain Bluebirds in flight. Here I show them carrying food and (surprisingly) hovering.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bluebirds visit us each spring, and while it is true that a few do nest here, the exciting time occurs when there are many of them on their way north.<\/p>\n

The Mountain Bluebird is blue — well, at least the male is. Here, he is siting on a bush in the grasslands and watching for something to eat. I thought he was looking for ants, but that turns out not what he was after.
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The female has much less blue on her — a bit on the wing and tail. This one looks pregnant.
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Upon spotting something, the bluebird flies down to the grass to fetch it. It seem that this exercise is often unsuccessful.
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But, now and then it catches a grub, which it takes to a bush and eats.
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My most spectacular shot of a male Mountain Bluebird with a grub is this one.
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It then flew towards a bush where it swallowed the grub.
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Here are three pictures showing the Mountain Bluebird hovering. I have never seen it hover for long — perhaps two seconds. This particular bird hovered for about a second and what is shown is one half-cycle of its wings. When it is hovering over a spot in the grasslands, it is perfectly still except for the wings. I have kept the trees in the picture to show this.
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The wings are now halfway down.
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And now they are all the way down. I saw bluebirds hovering over the grasslands, now and then, while it searched for grubs. But, in spite of my repeated attempts, I only managed pictures one time. Note that while hovering, it is not horizontal, sloped upwards.
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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  This is a continuation of the previous posting: flying blue. In that I showed Mountain Bluebirds in flight. Here I show them carrying food and (surprisingly) hovering.\u00a0 Bluebirds visit us each spring, and while it is true that a … Continue reading →<\/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-31680","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\/31680","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=31680"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31691,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31680\/revisions\/31691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}