{"id":36617,"date":"2016-01-14T05:57:51","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T12:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=36617"},"modified":"2016-01-14T08:16:10","modified_gmt":"2016-01-14T15:16:10","slug":"song-sparrow-in-a-frosty-sparkling-wonderland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/14\/song-sparrow-in-a-frosty-sparkling-wonderland\/","title":{"rendered":"Song Sparrow In A Frosty, Sparkling Wonderland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes the setting is just as important to the\u00a0photo as the subject. I\u00a0believe\u00a0that to be\u00a0the case for each image in this series of six.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"song<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS\u00a0USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I photographed this Song Sparrow at Farmington Bay WMA in January of 2010. It was one of those magical mornings when the entire universe\u00a0seemed to be covered in thick hoarfrost that sparkled\u00a0in the sunlight. It was still very cold when I found the sparrow feeding on seeds encased within the frost so most of the time the bird was fluffed up while it was trying to feed and that combination made its feeding efforts a little awkward.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"song<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS\u00a0USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

At times the sparrow seemed to be playing peekaboo with me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"song<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS\u00a0USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

At first glance this perch may\u00a0appear to\u00a0be a different one than in the first two images but the bird had simply moved further out on the stem so that the weight of the sparrow bent\u00a0it down. As\u00a0it moved along the twig it had some difficulty maintaining its balance – thus the somewhat awkward positions of its feet, the angle of its tail and the more streamlined and slightly less fluffed-up body feathers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"song<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS\u00a0USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once it found a comfortable spot on the stem it squatted down on the perch, fluffed up and began to seriously harvest seeds (this is the only image in this series that I’ve posted before).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"song<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS\u00a0USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The sparrow\u00a0fluffed up so much as it squatted down on the stem that its profile reminded me a little of a water balloon resting on a flat, solid surface.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"song<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS\u00a0USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The feeding activities of the sparrow knocked a lot of the frost off the stem and when the ice-flakes would fall the sparrow sometimes watched them go down. These guys don’t miss much…<\/p>\n

Another thing I remember about that morning was how eerily quiet it was. The frost and snow muffled any sounds\u00a0so when I stopped my pickup for a bird and the crunching noise of my tires on the snow stopped, the lack of sound was\u00a0mesmerizing in that white, crisp and\u00a0sparkly world. It was one\u00a0of my few times in the field where I wasn’t\u00a0mostly focused on birds. It was truly delightful to be\u00a0out there.<\/p>\n

I may be posting more images like these\u00a0from my archives over the next few days because there’s a series of storms lined up to give us more snow so I likely won’t be going shooting anytime soon since\u00a0good light\u00a0will probably be nonexistent.<\/p>\n

Maybe I’ll get a chance to try out my new snow blower…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Sometimes the setting is just as important to the photo as the subject. I believe that to be the case for each image in this series of six.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[334,2782,392,523],"tags":[1008,521,522,286,290],"class_list":["post-36617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-song-sparrows","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-frost","tag-melospiza-melodia","tag-snow","tag-song-sparrow"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9wB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36617","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=36617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}