![\"long-billed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/long-billed-curlew-2906-ron-dudley.jpg\")
1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nThis is an older image of a Long-billed Curlew perched on and displaying from sagebrush on Antelope Island in early July. I like the pose, the warm early light and the graded blues in the background. And of course I love the sagebrush. Though curlews prefer grassland habitats for nesting they often land on the higher sage to display and watch over their territories.<\/p>\n
I probably romanticize sagebrush as a symbol of the old west but I also love its unique gray-green color, its yellow flowers in late summer and early fall and the habitat it provides for species as varied as Sage Grouse, Gray Vireos, Sage Thrashers, Pronghorn, Mule Deer and several species of rabbits.<\/p>\n
And its smell is to die for, especially after a rain. Occasionally while photographing birds from my pickup\u00a0along the edge of a road I’ll inadvertently run over a small piece of sage with a tire and instantly that sweet, pungent\u00a0odor fills my truck. When that happens I’ll often just sit there for a\u00a0while and savor the moment and the smell. On those occasions my mind\u00a0typically wanders to my Dudley ancestors who crossed the plains in a covered wagon\u00a0from Illinois to Utah in 1850. They would have been intimately acquainted with the sweet\u00a0aroma of sagebrush.<\/p>\n
One of my favorite authors (and a personal hero) had the following to say about the smell of sagebrush. I couldn’t agree more.<\/p>\n
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- \u00a0…\u00a0the perfume of sagebrush after rain, evokes in magical catalysis, like certain music, the space and light and clarity and piercing strangeness of the American West.” Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
If you haven’t smelled sagebrush in the rain you haven’t lived (and I say that with only a wee bit of hyperbole).<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
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Sagebrush holds a special attraction for me so I’m particularly fond of images of birds perched on it.<\/p>\n