{"id":6169,"date":"2014-03-01T03:05:02","date_gmt":"2014-03-01T10:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=6169"},"modified":"2014-02-28T15:20:33","modified_gmt":"2014-02-28T22:20:33","slug":"swift-as-meteors-glide-through-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/01\/swift-as-meteors-glide-through-the-air\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Swift As Meteors&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Pied-billed Grebe by Rick Wright, Tours and Private Guiding, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/rickwright\/8477035241\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Pied-billed Grebe\" src=\"https:\/\/c1.staticflickr.com\/9\/8232\/8477035241_6cafd334b2.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Though the species is well known to be migratory, individual\u00a0<strong>Pied-billed Grebes\u00a0<\/strong>strike me (misleadingly) as among the most sedentary of birds. I can count on one hand the number of times I&#8217;ve seen one in anything even approaching truly sustained flight, and sometimes I wonder whether they don&#8217;t use some sort of subterranean Northwest Passage to move through the continent&#8217;s aquifers with the seasons.<\/p>\n<p>John James Audubon had more confidence in the grebes&#8217; aerial abilities, which he describes in a decidedly overwrought apostrophe in the <em>Ornithological Biography<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I know you can fly too&#8230;. September has come &#8230; the evening is calms and beautiful; you spread out your wings, reach with some difficulty a proper height, and swift as meteors glide through the air, until, meeting with warmer waters, you alight on them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Poetic lie-cense, I guess we can call it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though the species is well known to be migratory, individual\u00a0Pied-billed Grebes\u00a0strike me (misleadingly) as among the most sedentary of birds. I can count on one hand the number of times I&#8217;ve seen one in anything even approaching truly sustained flight, and sometimes I wonder whether they don&#8217;t use some sort of subterranean Northwest Passage to &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/01\/swift-as-meteors-glide-through-the-air\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8220;Swift As Meteors&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,80,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6169"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6169"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8411,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6169\/revisions\/8411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}