{"id":139223,"date":"2023-07-10T05:53:42","date_gmt":"2023-07-10T11:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=139223"},"modified":"2023-07-10T06:29:41","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T12:29:41","slug":"male-horned-lark-singing-in-the-early-morning-montana-cold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/10\/male-horned-lark-singing-in-the-early-morning-montana-cold\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Horned Lark Singing In The Early Morning Montana Cold"},"content":{"rendered":"

There isn’t a lot of buzz over Horned Larks in birding circles and I dreaded processing more photos from my recent Montana camping trip because I had to take all of those photos as JPEGS, which I really don’t like to process. So I was sorely tempted to not post any photos of this bird.<\/p>\n

But I’ve had a soft spot for Horned Larks since I was a pre-teen when they were the most common bird, by far, on our Montana farm so how could I not.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Mornings were cold while I was in Montana. Temps were significantly below freezing when I found this male Horned Lark on a fence post at about 6:30 AM, so he was fluffed up for most of the time I was with him. He was wary of me at first but he soon settled into what appeared to be his normal morning routine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

And man, was he ever a singer. About the only time he stopped singing was when he was preening.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

He turned circles on his perch, singing the entire time.<\/p>\n

If you’ve never heard the soft, tinkling song of the Horned Lark, here’s a link to a short video<\/a><\/span><\/span> that shows you almost exactly what I was seeing and hearing when I was photographing this guy. Even the perch is almost identical.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ll close with one of the few photos I took of him when he wasn’t<\/em> singing. But he was sure puffed up in the cold and looking like the Pillsbury Doughboy (remember him?) and his ‘horns’ were really standing at attention. They often aren’t.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I still remember one of the first times I got close enough to a Horned Lark to realize that they were more than just another LBJ (little brown job). I was about eight years old and brushing my horse Star when a male Horned Lark landed on a fence post right next to me and began to sing.\u00a0 For the first time I noticed the subtle yellows, whites and blacks and the distinctive occipital feather tufts (horns) that set them apart. And he seemed to be singing his sweet, delicate, tinkling song just for me. I was hooked.<\/p>\n

So I’d have felt guilty, even selfish, if I hadn’t processed and posted these photos.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Avian memories from my childhood. (4 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139225,"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":[334,354,1493],"tags":[555,174,175,211,220,237,4602,284,289],"class_list":["post-139223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-horned-larks","category-montana-favorite-locations","tag-centennial-valley","tag-horned-lark","tag-horns","tag-male","tag-montana-2","tag-occipital-feather-tufts","tag-pillsbury-doughboy","tag-singing","tag-song"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/horned-lark-4506-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Adx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139223","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=139223"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139274,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139223\/revisions\/139274"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}