{"id":38258,"date":"2013-04-18T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johnandrewwright.com\/?p=2517"},"modified":"2019-12-22T22:45:15","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T09:45:15","slug":"action-at-the-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/action-at-the-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"Action at the Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late this afternoon I stopped in at what is reputedly the smallest and newest lake in Japan, Lake Shirachi in Shimabara.<\/p>\n

Actually more of a large pond than a lake, it is surrounded by streets but usually has herons and egrets as well as a few resident “soup” ducks.<\/p>\n

However it is also a good place to attempt to photograph Barn Swallows in flight as they feed and drink in and around the small lake.<\/p>\n

This afternoon there weren’t too many other birds around, just a juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron, although earlier I had paused at the forest and photographed a female Brambling as well as a nice flowering Chinese Fringetree branch! The Barn Swallows cooperated nicely…an interesting shot has two birds trying to snatch a feather in mid-air, while another shot has a bird that plucked something from the water’s surface – probably a bug of some sort.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Barn Swallows in flight<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Late this afternoon I stopped in at what is reputedly the smallest and newest lake in Japan, Lake Shirachi in Shimabara. Actually more of a large pond than a lake, it is surrounded by streets but usually has herons and egrets as well as a few resident “soup” ducks. However it is also a good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":2192934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/barn-swallow-1147-1024x6821.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[705,2127,1718,7835,2449,3947,1857],"class_list":["post-38258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-barn-swallow","tag-brambling","tag-egrets","tag-japan","tag-john-andrew-wright","tag-shimabara","tag-swallows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2192934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}