{"id":12,"date":"2007-07-22T20:46:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-22T20:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/?p=12"},"modified":"2007-07-22T20:46:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-22T20:46:00","slug":"dinner-is-served-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/dinner-is-served-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Dinner is served, part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/blog\/uploaded_images\/egret-great-fish7-18-07-710807.jpg\"><img style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/blog\/uploaded_images\/egret-great-fish7-18-07-710803.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>Finding birds to photograph can sometimes be a challenge during the summer months. Last year, record high temperatures made it difficult to spend time outdoors in the afternoons; this year it was the record rainfall with flooded roads and lakes that posed the greatest challenge. So I decided to have fun finding different ways to photograph the familiar, easy-to-locate birds rather than focus on the elusive, rare migrants. The result is a collection of photos focus on what birds eat&#8230; or how they eat.<\/p>\n<p>At the time I posted the Mississippi Kite with the bird (previous post)  I didn&#8217;t know that being an &#8220;uninvited guests&#8221; at dinner was going to be my new role for this theme!  For the next few weeks, I&#8217;ll be adding new photos that are all about &#8220;what&#8217;s for dinner.&#8221;  This is also helping me learn more about the birds&#8217; habits. It&#8217;s been very rewarding and entertaining!<\/p>\n<p>This photo is of a Great Egret who certainly landed the big one!  I watched this egret as it grabbed this large sand bass at Lake Hefner (Oklahoma City) &#8212; it seemed obvious to me that it was too big for even this experienced fish-catcher to handle!  It took a lot of chugging, but the egret ate the whole thing!  I don&#8217;t know the length of the Great Egret&#8217;s beak and I hope I can figure it out so I can estimate the size of the bass.   For now, I&#8217;d guess that the fish was about 12&#8243; long.  It certainly made a lot of fishermen envious to see the egret land this one! (I&#8217;ll add an update if I get a better measurement.)<\/p>\n<p>Upcoming dinner-time photos will include the Grasshopper Sparrow, Eastern Kingbird and Barn Swallow.  What&#8217;s for dinner?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finding birds to photograph can sometimes be a challenge during the summer months. Last year, record high temperatures made it difficult to spend time outdoors in the afternoons; this year it was the record rainfall with flooded roads and lakes that posed the greatest challenge. So I decided to have fun finding different ways to [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}