{"id":34599,"date":"2015-10-11T06:22:52","date_gmt":"2015-10-11T12:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=34599"},"modified":"2015-10-11T06:29:57","modified_gmt":"2015-10-11T12:29:57","slug":"horned-larks-common-subtly-beautiful-and-a-little-bit-quirky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/11\/horned-larks-common-subtly-beautiful-and-a-little-bit-quirky\/","title":{"rendered":"Horned Larks – Common, Subtly Beautiful And A Little Bit Quirky"},"content":{"rendered":"

Horned Larks are\u00a0one of the most common and widespread bird\u00a0species on earth but I don’t believe\u00a0they get the respect they deserve. They’re often largely\u00a0overlooked by birders and photographers, presumably because they’re so common, but when seen up close I think they’re beautiful\u00a0birds. They’re\u00a0also tough little devils – in some of the harsher habitats in their range the only breeding bird species are Horned Larks and the equally resilient Common Raven.<\/p>\n

The first two images below were taken two days ago and the third in June of this year, all on Antelope Island.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"horned<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

When I think of Horned Larks the word “subtle” always comes to mind. From a distance they appear to be just another “little brown job” (as Elephant’s Child might call them) but up close their delicate colors and plumage patterns\u00a0are quite\u00a0attrractive and they have subtle songs and personalities to match, though fighting males are far from subtle about their aerial combat. When I’m watching one of these birds through my lens I’m always struck by the sweet, delicate tinkling quality of their soft songs and calls which they perform year-round and even in flight.<\/p>\n

If you’re interested here’s a link to their songs<\/a>. The “mixed song” is the one I hear most often.<\/p>\n

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\"horned<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But I think they’re a quirky species because they’re so “twitchy”. They’ll be singing softly away and suddenly they’ll jerk into a weird posture for an instant for no apparent reason. The next time they do it the posture will be different but if you wait long enough it’ll happen. Whenever I’m photographing Horned Larks I always try to use relatively fast shutter speeds to freeze the motion because it’s very quick when it happens. And they don’t give you any warning either so it’s impossible to anticipate.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"horned<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This male twitched for me while perched on an old sunflower stem – usually I only get them perched on rocks. It didn’t take off and as far as I could tell it wasn’t reacting to another bird – it just apparently had the urge to twitch.<\/p>\n

Speaking of weirdness involving Horned Larks, while I was researching this post (trying to find an explanation for what I call\u00a0“twitching”) I ran across a little tidbit that really surprised me. Birds of North America Online out of Cornell gives a list of nest predators of Horned Larks (nest predators are those that prey on eggs\u00a0or small young). The nest predators they list include a variety of small mammals (meadow voles, shrews and deer mice) and a few birds including the American Crow but that list also included the Western Meadowlark.<\/p>\n

I had no idea that meadowlarks preyed on eggs and\/or young of other bird species. There’s always something new to learn about birds.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Horned Larks are one of the most common and widespread bird species on earth but I don’t believe they get the respect they deserve.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34600,"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":[3,334,354],"tags":[31,1335,124,174,2707,282,289,311,323],"class_list":["post-34599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-horned-larks","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-call","tag-eremophila-alpestris","tag-horned-lark","tag-nest-predator","tag-shutter-speed","tag-song","tag-utah-2","tag-western-meadowlark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/horned-lark-1876-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-903","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34599","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=34599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}