{"id":145312,"date":"2023-10-23T06:09:34","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T12:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=145312"},"modified":"2023-10-23T06:09:34","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T12:09:34","slug":"white-crowned-sparrows-in-some-pretty-intense-fall-colors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/23\/white-crowned-sparrows-in-some-pretty-intense-fall-colors\/","title":{"rendered":"White-crowned Sparrows In Some Pretty Intense Fall Colors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eight days ago in a remote area of northern Utah I found one of the largest flocks of migrating songbirds I’ve ever seen. They were nearly all juvenile White-crowned Sparrows, although I did see two adults. They were feeding in bushes of several types alongside the dirt road and this time of year the sumac and wild roses were particularly colorful.<\/p>\n

Depending on your tolerance for bright colors in bird photography, some of these settings may be a little too bright and colorful. But I like the variety.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, 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 begin with this guy, singing softly in a setting whose colors are just beginning to turn.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, 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 was hoping that this bird would sit up nice and tall to better fill the open space surrounded by branches that frame that space so well. It didn’t happen.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

But to make up for it ‘he’ did the next best thing when he moved forward on the branch so that his body hid the bright, bare twig that we now can’t see behind him. I think he’s still framed pretty nicely.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This bird was the star of the show because he posed for so long on so many different, colorful perches. He spent a while preening and then roused but in the rousing photos I never did get any light in his eye.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

There were more colorful leaves in…<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

every direction he looked. In this shot he’s looking toward his next perch, which turned out to be the clump of leaves at the upper left side of the frame.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Boy, that’s a lot of red.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The same bird on yet another perch. When he eventually took off, I thanked him for being so patient with me.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, 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 conclude with a juvenile in a yellow setting instead of red. I like his perky pose.<\/p>\n

It was a strange morning. I drove many miles to and from this location and spent three hours looking for birds when I arrived. But the entire morning was almost birdless, except for about a 150′ section of these bushes that was literally crawling with White-crowned Sparrows. In a situation like that it’s hard to estimate how many birds there were but my best guess at the time was roughly a thousand.<\/p>\n

Feast or famine.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Eight days ago in a remote area of northern Utah I found one of the largest flocks of migrating songbirds I’ve ever seen. (8 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145320,"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":[334,350],"tags":[3625,768,190,7198,311,1663],"class_list":["post-145312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-white-crowned-sparrows","tag-fall-colors","tag-immature","tag-juvenile","tag-migrating-white-crowned-sparrows","tag-utah-2","tag-zonotrichia-leucophrys"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/white-crowned-sparrow-9633-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-BNK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145312","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=145312"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145363,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145312\/revisions\/145363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}