{"id":14456,"date":"2013-04-18T02:30:27","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T08:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=14456"},"modified":"2013-04-18T04:33:30","modified_gmt":"2013-04-18T10:33:30","slug":"meadowlark-wary-at-first-then-singing-with-gusto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/18\/meadowlark-wary-at-first-then-singing-with-gusto\/","title":{"rendered":"Meadowlark – Wary At First, Then Singing With Gusto"},"content":{"rendered":"

I tend to like gnarly old sagebrush perches and I’ve had my eye on this one for a while.\u00a0 It’s close to the road, in good light in the morning and Western Meadowlarks use it often.\u00a0 But unlike when they’re perched on an ugly sign, they always seem to fly off as I approach when they’re on this one.<\/p>\n

That changed\u00a0yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0This bird was wary as I approached – you can see it in its posture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Eventually it relaxed a little and began to look at things going on around it other than me.\u00a0\u00a0 At this point I knew that soon it\u00a0wouldn’t be able to resist doing what they’re so heavily programmed to do, especially in the springtime…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

and that’s to sing with pronounced enthusiasm.\u00a0 And a glorious sound it was!<\/p>\n

These birds don’t innately know how to sing their meadowlark song – it’s something they must learn from more experienced birds when they’re juveniles.\u00a0 If they’re deprived from hearing the song of other meadowlarks during the “critical learning period” they learn the songs of other species and retain those songs throughout life.<\/p>\n

Imagine hearing a meadowlark sing like a Red-winged Blackbird, Common Yellowthroat or Eastern Wood-Pewee.\u00a0 Bizarre, but it has been documented to occur (I’ve talked about this before but I figured it was worth mentioning again for those who may have missed it).<\/p>\n

When meadowlarks first appeared here this spring they were\u00a0thick on Antelope Island but they’ve thinned out noticeably now.\u00a0 I’ve heard reports that they’re now in Montana again so I suspect\u00a0that many of the birds on the island have now moved further north.<\/p>\n

But as always I’m sure\u00a0there’ll be plenty of them left for me to enjoy\u00a0all summer and fall.<\/p>\n

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

I tend to like gnarly old sagebrush perches and I’ve had my eye on this one for a while. It’s close to the road, in good light in the morning and Western Meadowlarks use it often. But unlike when they’re perched on an ugly sign, they always seem to fly off as I approach when they’re on this one.<\/p>\n

That changed yesterday morning.<\/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":[334,370],"tags":[31,1390,1391,289,669,323],"class_list":["post-14456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-western-meadowlarks","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-learning-song","tag-mgration","tag-song","tag-sturnella-neglecta","tag-western-meadowlark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3La","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14456","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=14456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}