Garr Ranch<\/a><\/span><\/span> on Antelope Island. I took lots of photos of him but he was side lit so only a few of them had good light on his face and most of his body. Getting good light on the bird while he was in a singing pose I like is one of the reasons I take so many photos in a situation like this. Very few of them actually turn out well. Sometimes none of them do.<\/p>\nMeadowlarks have to learn their primary song from other meadowlarks and if it isn’t learned by the end of their first winter it’s never learned. Captive meadowlarks isolated from their own species through their first winter and then exposed to singing meadowlarks never develop meadowlark song. Instead they imitate other species they heard during that critical early period (Red-winged Blackbirds for example) and they retain those songs throughout life.<\/p>\n
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I have difficulty remembering the scientific (Latin) names of some species but others strike a chord with me that somehow makes them much easier to recall. Scientific names such as Buteo regalis<\/em> (Ferruginous Hawk) and Tyrannus verticalis<\/em> (Western Kingbird) come to mind easily for me. And no one with a juvenile sense of humor like mine could forget Turdus migratorius<\/em> (American Robin). But I have to look up Cistothorus palustris<\/em> (Marsh Wren) every time I post a photo of that species.<\/p>\nFor me the scientific name of the Western Meadowlark, Sturnella neglecta<\/em>, is one of the easy ones, probably because of the curious aspects of neglecta<\/em>.. Even though Lewis and Clark were familiar with the Western Meadowlark, the species was subsequently overlooked and mostly ignored by later early naturalists so in 1844 John James Audubon assigned neglecta<\/em> as their species name.<\/p>\nThe genus name Sturnella<\/i>\u00a0is a diminutive of the Latin\u00a0sturnus<\/i> meaning “starling” and that makes sense.<\/p>\n
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The body and bill shapes of meadowlarks and starlings are very similar but this is a silhouette of a…<\/p>\n
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meadowlark.<\/p>\n
I’m rambling again. Time to quit.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How do meadowlarks learn their distinctive and complex song? And what about that curious Latin name? (3 images)<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,334,370],"tags":[31,6245,6244,3040,6246,284,669,311,323],"class_list":["post-108861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-western-meadowlarks","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-bird-latin-names","tag-bird-scientific-names","tag-garr-ranch","tag-how-do-meadowlarks-learn-their-songs","tag-singing","tag-sturnella-neglecta","tag-utah-2","tag-western-meadowlark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/western-meadowlark-1964b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-sjP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108861"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108893,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108861\/revisions\/108893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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