It’s not easy to get photos of Horned Larks with insects in their beaks. The diet of adults of the species consists largely of seeds year-round but they do feed insects to their young so if you can catch them at the right time of year it’s possible to get photos of them with insects. Yesterday morning in the foothills of the Stansbury Mountains I photographed both a male and a female with their beaks full of insects.
For some reason I really enjoy being able to photograph a bird when its namesake habitat is obvious in the photo.
Many bird photographers tend to largely ignore the most common species in their areas and I’m as guilty of that as anyone.
There seems to be a sort of “supply and demand” philosophy – the more common they are the less appealing they are as subjects. That’s too bad for at least a couple of reasons – familiar birds can be just as interesting and beautiful as many of the others and what’s “common” where we live and/or shoot is very often uncommon or even nonexistent for folks in other areas. This post is meant to make up to some degree for my own poor judgment at times in choosing subjects.
The Ferruginous Hawk has been called “the largest, most powerful, and grandest of our buteos, a truly regal bird” – an assessment I fully agree with.
Many folks just don’t like unnatural perches. When it comes to nature photography they prefer that no sign of the “hand of man” be apparent in the image. To others the perch doesn’t matter much as long as the bird (subject) is presented in an appealing manner.
I guess I’m somewhere in the middle.
As a result of its secretive nature the Green-tailed Towhee is one of the least well-known of all North American birds.
The Ferruginous Hawk is the largest, most powerful buteo in North America. They have a broad chest, wide gape, large head and long, narrow-tipped wings. Unlike most other buteos they often perch on the ground. Their huge nests, typically constructed in isolated trees or on cliffs, were often constructed of bison bones and wool before the elimination of that massive animal from the western plains. This species is often compared to the Golden Eagle with which it has much in common and they are fully deserving of their apt scientific name, Buteo regalis. 1/4000, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, called in or set up This bird had been perched on an old fence post in Utah’s west desert (background is the Stansbury Mountains) and I was able to capture it in flight soon after it lifted off. I like the blood on the left foot and the somewhat unusual wing position as it took off mostly in my direction. This wing position is seldom seen in photographs because the wing would obscure the head in the much more common side view. Typically these birds don’t take off toward the photographer from a low perch. Ron
I like to photograph raptors (or most any bird, really) in this kind of light when I think I can get away with it. When I first started photographing birds I always made an effort to get the light source directly behind me and now I shudder to think of the interesting light I sometimes missed, especially since what I ended up with was often something rather mundane. I recently posted a somewhat similar image of a red-tail but the poses and settings in the two photos are quite different from each other. 1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc I found this hawk perched in dappled, directional light a few months ago. It was near the bottom of a canyon in the Stansbury Mountains of Utah so I was looking slightly down on the bird – a perspective I appreciate if the angle isn’t too steep. I like the haughty pose – which was actually a reaction to another red-tail flying toward this bird. Ron
Strongly directional light can be a blessing or a curse and all too often it’s the latter. It makes proper exposure a challenge because it’s very easy to blow the highlights and/or have shadows so deep that there’s no detail there at all. But when things work out the effect can be appealing and dramatic. 1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This old cedar stump is a favorite perch of Red-tailed Hawks at the base of Utah’s Stansbury Mountains in the west desert. It’s usually a frustrating situation for me though because I can’t access a proper position to get the sun behind me and for most of the day the sidelight is just too harsh for an exposure that works well. But on this one morning the hawk was on the stump just as the sun came over the Oquirrh Mountains to the east so the light was soft and warm enough to make an exposure that I liked and I thought the shaded upper background worked well with the light on the bird’s head. Ron Ron
I have particularly fond memories of Horned Larks from growing up on our northwestern Montana family farm near Cut Bank, Montana. The fallow barley fields and adjacent short grass prairies abounded with them. But since I began photographing birds I’ve had very few opportunities with them here in Utah – until last week when had a grand time with multiple cooperative larks in the foothills of the Stansbury Mountains. And yes, the wind was blowing briskly – a perfect situation to remind me of those Montana larks! Singing in the wind The wind seemed to inspire the males to sing as they all seemed to be singing up a storm on this day, despite the early February date. Blown off the perch While it may look like this male is taking flight, in reality it was being blown off the perch by a sudden gust of wind. If it had been taking off, both wings would be extended. Wind- disheveled feathers In this photo, the wind updraft from the rock perch blew a perfect semicircle of his upper chest feathers into his black neck ring, making him look pretty silly. Very obvious “horns” This photo shows the “horns” (occipital feather tufts) that are characteristic of the species. The horns are found on both sexes but they are much less obvious in the female and rarely erected. This frontal view of the head shows the horns most distinctly when they are raised. Horns laying almost flat At times the horns are laid flat against the…
