{"id":28594,"date":"2014-12-27T06:19:08","date_gmt":"2014-12-27T13:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=28594"},"modified":"2014-12-27T06:19:08","modified_gmt":"2014-12-27T13:19:08","slug":"western-meadowlark-posing-in-the-snow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/27\/western-meadowlark-posing-in-the-snow\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Meadowlark Posing In The Snow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Western Meadowlarks can be quite approachable when they’re singing on territory in the spring and summer\u00a0but they’re\u00a0generally shy at other times.\u00a0 So I was quite surprised yesterday morning when this one allowed a close approach as it preened on a snowy perch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 1000, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

At first it just watched me to see if I posed a threat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 1000, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then it struck one of the stranger poses I’ve seen from a bird.\u00a0 This may appear to be a fairly typical scratching pose frozen by shutter speed but its behavior was atypical.\u00a0 The right foot barely moved for quite some time as it held its beak wide open.\u00a0 I would have expected the foot to be moving fast as it scratched but it wasn’t.\u00a0\u00a0I took 29 shots that looked almost exactly like this one with the foot in almost the same position (it wasn’t rapidly going up and down) and its beak was\u00a0wide open the entire time.\u00a0 I remember being quite surprised and amused by what I was observing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 1000, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here I caught the wing slightly up as it returned to a more typical standing position.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 1000, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then a vigorous rouse…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 1000, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

and some preening.\u00a0 Here the bird looked up for a moment after having had its bill buried in its feathers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/8, ISO 1000, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then it stretched its right wing followed fairly quickly…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

by a stretch of\u00a0the other wing.\u00a0\u00a0Western Meadowlark preening sessions\u00a0can last for up to 10 minutes (BNA Online) but this one was over in about three, possibly because of traffic on the nearby road.<\/p>\n

One of the joys of winter bird photography is catching them in snowy settings like this one.\u00a0 I’ll be tired of the snow before spring but right now I welcome it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Western Meadowlarks can be quite approachable when they’re singing on territory in the spring and summer but they’re generally shy at other times. So I was quite surprised yesterday morning when this one allowed a close approach as it preened on a snowy perch.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28600,"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":[1008,255,994,1840,286,511,669,311,323],"class_list":["post-28594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-western-meadowlarks","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-preening","tag-rouse","tag-scratching","tag-snow","tag-stretching","tag-sturnella-neglecta","tag-utah-2","tag-western-meadowlark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/western-meadowlark-8143-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7rc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28594","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=28594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}