{"id":161606,"date":"2024-07-12T04:58:05","date_gmt":"2024-07-12T10:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=161606"},"modified":"2024-07-12T04:58:05","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T10:58:05","slug":"lark-sparrow-upward-takeoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/12\/lark-sparrow-upward-takeoff\/","title":{"rendered":"Lark Sparrow Upward Takeoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

And this brutal heat.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Five days ago in the west desert I was trying to draw a bead on a Sage Thrasher buried in a bush (the same thrasher I posted photos of two days ago) when I had a very brief opportunity for a grab shot of this Lark Sparrow. A split second after I got ‘him’ in focus he took off steeply upward, which gave me a shooting angle and flight posture that some refer to as “angel wings”. It’s a term I generally don’t use but it works for some.<\/p>\n

But whatever you want to call the flight posture, I like it. Especially with his flared tail and a near-perfect head turn in good light. The harlequin facial markings of the species are a bonus.<\/p>\n

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A vertical composition of the same photo reveals the perch he took off from.<\/p>\n

I can’t close my post today without sending sympathetic thoughts to my readers who are suffering in this unbearable heat. Here in Salt Lake City it’s been 100\u00b0 or slightly above for days and it’s supposed to be 106\u00b0 today and tomorrow, before dropping a few degrees after that.<\/p>\n

Birds are having a hard time too. I clean and refill my back yard bird bath daily and I’ve never seen so many birds using it in the mornings and evenings. During the heat of the day, birds seem to disappear as they seek relief from the heat in direct sunlight.<\/p>\n

Each day about 1 1\/2″ of water evaporates from my bird bath in this extremely dry heat. I can just imagine how much is evaporating daily from Great Salt Lake.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

And this brutal heat. (2 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161607,"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":[334,367],"tags":[7531,726,146,7532,197,7529,311,7530,533],"class_list":["post-161606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-lark-sparrows","tag-angel-wings","tag-chondestes-grammacus","tag-flight","tag-harlequin-facial-markings","tag-lark-sparrow","tag-taleoff","tag-utah-2","tag-water-evaporating-from-great-salt-lake","tag-west-desert"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/lark-sparrow-6334-horizontal-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-G2y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161606","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=161606"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161648,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161606\/revisions\/161648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}