{"id":22649,"date":"2014-03-12T05:18:33","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T11:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=22649"},"modified":"2014-03-12T06:49:58","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T12:49:58","slug":"goofy-western-meadowlark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/12\/goofy-western-meadowlark\/","title":{"rendered":"Goofy Western Meadowlark"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was the strangest behavior I’ve ever seen from a meadowlark, though it was difficult to capture photographically. \u00a0I encountered\u00a0this\u00a0bird three days ago on Antelope Island.\u00a0 It was perched on top of a bush in low light so I had to get a little creative to mostly freeze its twitchy movements.\u00a0 I dialed in camera settings that gave me as much shutter speed as possible and then amped it up a little more by deliberately underexposing the images and hoping I could compensate later\u00a0during processing.\u00a0 It seemed to work out\u00a0reasonably well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4 II, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The\u00a0meadowlark wasn’t preening, at least not in the normal sense.\u00a0 This may seem a little crazy but it looked exactly<\/em> like the bird was trying to bathe\u00a0in nonexisting water.\u00a0 It repeatedly put its head down, crouched, fluffed and shook, just like it was standing in shallow water and bathing.\u00a0 It repeated the pattern for at least a minute.\u00a0 It was pretty bizarre to watch but difficult to photograph because each time it did so its head and the left side of its\u00a0body\u00a0was\u00a0shaded.\u00a0 I guess you had to be there…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4 II, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In-between “bathing” bouts the bird would droop its wings, stand more erect and look about.\u00a0 I actually like this image quite well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4 II, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I include this\u00a0shot because I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed\u00a0this yellow on the outside wing-margins of meadowlarks.\u00a0 It may be a quirk of this individual bird or it may be very common and I’ve just missed it in the past (or forgotten, which does seem to happen a\u00a0bit\u00a0more frequently these days…).<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0 For the next few days I’ll be out of town on my first camping\/photo trip of the season so I won’t be able to actively participate in any discussions that may pop up in the comments (though I will be reading them on my phone).\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was the strangest behavior I’ve ever seen from a meadowlark, though it was difficult to capture photographically.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22651,"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":[3,393,334,370],"tags":[31,47,669,323],"class_list":["post-22649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bathing-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-western-meadowlarks","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-bathing","tag-sturnella-neglecta","tag-western-meadowlark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/western-meadowlark-6371-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5Tj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22649","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=22649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}