{"id":839,"date":"2009-12-25T03:03:40","date_gmt":"2009-12-25T11:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/?p=839"},"modified":"2009-12-25T03:03:40","modified_gmt":"2009-12-25T11:03:40","slug":"thanksgiving-with-mountain-bluebirds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/thanksgiving-with-mountain-bluebirds\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanksgiving with Mountain Bluebirds"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_841\" style=\"width: 385px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/bluebird-mountain1.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-841\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-841\" title=\"bluebird-mountain\" src=\"http:\/\/backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/bluebird-mountain1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"375\" height=\"347\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-841\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mountai Bluebird, female<\/p><\/div>\n<p>On 2009&#8217;s Thanksgiving Day I spent the afternoon at the <a title=\"Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fws.gov\/southwest\/refuges\/oklahoma\/wichitamountains\/\" target=\"_blank\">Wichita Mountains Nat&#8217;l Wildlife Refuge<\/a> near Lawton, Oklahoma. It&#8217;s my favorite place in Oklahoma for day trips because the scenery is stunning even when the birding might not be.<\/p>\n<p>It was a beautiful clear day and, as I had hoped, most people were at home doing traditional Thanksgiving dinner so I had almost 60,000 acres to myself! The bird activity wasn&#8217;t spectacular but I found a flock of about 30 Mountain Bluebirds that gave me a memorable photography experience.<\/p>\n<p>The bluebirds were active in a juniper and feeding on the blue seed\/berries. They were so intent on feeding that I was able to get close enough for detail shots of their plummage. Almost all of the birds were females so I didn&#8217;t have the opportunity to get shots of the stunning blue of the males. But this was the closest &#8212; and best photos &#8212; I&#8217;ve gotten of Mountain Bluebirds.<\/p>\n<p>These bluebirds are slightly larger than our resident <a title=\"Eastern Bluebird\" href=\"http:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/gallery\/bluebird.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Eastern Bluebirds<\/a> and are seen only during winter in western Oklahoma when the food supply or weather in New Mexico and Colorado doesn&#8217;t meet their needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p id=\"caption-attachment-841\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mountai Bluebird, female<\/p>\n<p>On 2009&#8217;s Thanksgiving Day I spent the afternoon at the Wichita Mountains Nat&#8217;l Wildlife Refuge near Lawton, Oklahoma. It&#8217;s my favorite place in Oklahoma for day trips because the scenery is stunning even when the birding might not be.<\/p>\n<p>It was a beautiful clear day and, as I had hoped, [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}