{"id":13908,"date":"2013-04-01T03:00:53","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T09:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=13908"},"modified":"2013-04-01T06:57:19","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T12:57:19","slug":"a-meadowlark-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/01\/a-meadowlark-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"A Meadowlark Morning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning there\u00a0was meadowlark magic on the island.\u00a0 They were almost everywhere, singing lustily from atop their sagebrush and rabbitbrush perches (and more than a few ugly signposts).\u00a0 Several times I just stopped the truck, turned the engine off and\u00a0went outside to listen.\u00a0 You could hear dozens of them simultaneously –\u00a0some very close,\u00a0some far away and others everywhere in between.\u00a0 Their melodious calls literally bounced off the hilltops.<\/p>\n

And I even got close enough to a few of them to get some images I like.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This was one of them and\u00a0it sang for us for some time.\u00a0 But I also wanted take-off shots so I made sure I had what I thought was enough shutter speed and waited for\u00a0that explosive take-off, hoping I’d had enough coffee that morning to kick in my reflexes sufficiently.<\/p>\n

Take-off shots of small birds are infinitely more difficult than they are of larger ones like most raptors and waders.\u00a0 Smaller birds launch much more quickly, their wings move faster, their direction of take off is more unpredictable\u00a0and they can (and do) turn away from you on a dime.\u00a0\u00a0 I have many nice shots of raptors taking off but my files are sadly lacking similar images of songbirds.\u00a0 So I keep trying.\u00a0 And trying…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This time I got lucky.\u00a0 The bird launched at\u00a0an angle that worked,\u00a0I had good light and I caught the wings up.\u00a0 Notice that even 1\/4000 second shutter speed didn’t completely freeze the wings (I’m pretty sure that depth of field didn’t cause the wingtip blur).\u00a0 Readers sometimes ask why I use such high shutter speeds so often.\u00a0 A big part of the reason is because I’m regularly after these kinds of shots.\u00a0 These little birds move\u00a0fast!<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m happy as a lark (sorry…) if I can get a single image in a burst\u00a0that works when a small bird takes off but this time…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

the next one was a keeper too – this time with the wings down.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0lo and behold…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

the third image in the burst was one I liked also!\u00a0 For me it’s unheard of to get three decent take-off shots of a small bird in the same sequence.\u00a0 True, the bird was a little past me but I’m not complaining.<\/p>\n

I was pretty close to this meadowlark for take-off shots (these are not large crops) and I’m amazed that I didn’t clip anything in any of them, though I did have to add canvas for composition to this last image.<\/p>\n

One of my “meadowlark goals” (probably a pie in the sky pipe dream) is to photograph one of these birds singing on the back or horns\u00a0of a bison.\u00a0 Lots of birds\u00a0such as\u00a0starlings, cowbirds and magpies regularly perch on bison.\u00a0 And meadowlarks are ubiquitous on the island\u00a0and seemingly not fussy about their perch.\u00a0 The problem is, I’ve never\u00a0seen one on a bison –\u00a0even from a distance.\u00a0 Perhaps meadowlarks don’t like living, breathing, pooping, moving perches.<\/p>\n

Maybe it’ll happen one day.\u00a0 If it ever does, you’ll know…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning there was meadowlark magic on the island. They were almost everywhere, singing lustily from atop their sagebrush and rabbitbrush perches (and more than a few ugly signposts). Several times I just stopped the truck, turned the engine off and got outside to listen. You could hear dozens of them simultaneously – some very close, some far away and others everywhere in between. Their melodious calls literally bounced off the hilltops.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[146,177,282,284,669,486,323],"class_list":["post-13908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-western-meadowlarks","tag-flight","tag-humane-society-of-utah","tag-shutter-speed","tag-singing","tag-sturnella-neglecta","tag-take-off-shot","tag-western-meadowlark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3Ck","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13908","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=13908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}