{"id":29909,"date":"2015-03-05T05:58:59","date_gmt":"2015-03-05T12:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=29909"},"modified":"2015-03-05T06:05:04","modified_gmt":"2015-03-05T13:05:04","slug":"meadowlark-singing-foraging-and-gaping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/05\/meadowlark-singing-foraging-and-gaping\/","title":{"rendered":"Meadowlark – Singing, Foraging and “Gaping”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning this Western Meadowlark surprised me and gave me an intimate glimpse into its world.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

When I first began my session with the bird it was singing from a perch on Antelope Island.\u00a0It was a little too far away for images of the best quality but typical of me I fired away anyway and hoped for a good angle at take-off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 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

\u00a0When it did I expected it to launch slightly upward but it fooled me and …<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 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

dropped\u00a0down at a steep angle to the base of the bush so I had very little room at the bottom of the frame.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 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

The bird spent the next 12 minutes foraging for insects in the ground very close to me in my pickup and in that time I fired off 324 shots. Much of the time it was buried in the grass but I did get a few fairly clear images, including some of an interesting behavior.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 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

The bird checked me out a couple of times and after that it\u00a0simply ignored me as it probed for insects in the ground.\u00a0At this point the meadowlark came in so close…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

that I had to remove my teleconverter.<\/p>\n

Meadowlarks (and some blackbird species) often use an interesting and\u00a0fairly unique feeding technique when probing the ground for food.\u00a0In this process, known as gaping, they plunge their closed, long and sharp\u00a0awl-like bill into the ground (or beneath an object) and then the mandibles are spread apart widely to give them better\u00a0access to food. I’d known about the behavior previously\u00a0but these are the best and most detailed photos I’ve ever been able to get of it.<\/p>\n

When meadowlarks are observed in the field their bills are often coated with mud.\u00a0Here the reason for that becomes obvious.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meadowlarks are inveterate singers and though this bird was in frenzied feeding mode it just couldn’t resist singing a couple of times as it moved about looking for\u00a0a meal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was able to get several images that clearly showed the gaping behavior\u00a0and at times the mandibles in the ground were spread even wider than you see here. At one point this meadowlark caught a small worm but I was adjusting my camera settings so I missed it.<\/p>\n

Meadowlarks are usually quite skittish while feeding so I was delighted to get an intimate look at this behavior.<\/p>\n

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

Yesterday morning this Western Meadowlark surprised me and gave me an intimate glimpse into its world.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29912,"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":[3,334,392,370],"tags":[31,136,146,2434,1170,2435,284,669,311,323],"class_list":["post-29909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-western-meadowlarks","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-feeding","tag-flight","tag-gaping","tag-mandibles","tag-muddy-bill","tag-singing","tag-sturnella-neglecta","tag-utah-2","tag-western-meadowlark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/western-meadowlark-6408-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7Mp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29909","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=29909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}