{"id":39046,"date":"2016-04-25T05:57:48","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T11:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=39046"},"modified":"2016-04-25T06:31:03","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T12:31:03","slug":"bathing-meadowlark-it-pays-to-learn-to-anticipate-behavior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/25\/bathing-meadowlark-it-pays-to-learn-to-anticipate-behavior\/","title":{"rendered":"Bathing Meadowlark – It Pays To Learn To Anticipate Behavior"},"content":{"rendered":"

Predicting the behavior of this Western Meadowlark allowed me to get\u00a0a boat-load of\u00a0very interesting action shots.<\/p>\n

Each of these images was taken within these camera setting parameters: 1\/2500 – 1\/5000, f\/6.3 – f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday morning on Antelope Island as I was driving one of the dirt roads I noticed this bird land\u00a0near a\u00a0puddle in the road (it had rained the day before) and very close to the front of my slowly\u00a0moving pickup. By the time I got my truck stopped I had scared the bird off but it didn’t go far. Typically when meadowlarks flush they land some distance away so I\u00a0watched the bird alongside the road for a few moments. Something in its demeanor told me that it wanted to bathe in that puddle so I backed off a few feet, angled my pickup for a good shooting angle, turned off my engine\u00a0and waited.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

Within seconds the bird landed back at the puddle at a very good shooting distance. It hopped into the water, gave me a quick glance to make sure I was no threat…<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

and proceeded to bathe vigorously in the shallow water.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

The action was incredibly fast so often the shapes of the feathers…<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

were distorted and they brought up interesting columns of water from the puddle’s surface. These images impressed on me just how fast 1\/4000 sec (my shutter speed for this shot) really is.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

The bird made every effort to get\u00a0each feather wet in the very shallow water.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

Some of the postures were so fast that I didn’t even see them as I watched through my lens.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

I liked this column of water brought up from the puddle by the primaries of the left wing.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

Here the bird’s beak must have hit the bottom of the puddle.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

If you look closely you’ll see that I got a double catch light in the eye in this shot\u00a0(and several others)\u00a0– one from the sun behind me and the smaller one from the reflection of the sun on the water. This is a fairly common occurrence in these situations.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

The contortions of the bird’s body and feathers were pretty incredible…<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

to the point that sometimes the bird\u00a0twisted its head completely upside down.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

I think some of these postures are pretty funny.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

Eventually the bird turned in the water and presented its other side to me.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

In the end (literally) the meadowlark gave me a true butt shot, as if to express its displeasure that I had allowed it no privacy during its bath. After this it flew off and landed down the road\u00a0to shake off before flying away.<\/p>\n

This was some pretty intense shooting and one of those times when I was very grateful for the 10 frames\/sec burst rate of my Canon 7D\u00a0Mark II. In approximately\u00a045 seconds (a rough estimate)\u00a0I fired off 185 shots of the bird bathing and after culling I had\u00a0kept 65 of them. For me that’s a very high keeper rate. Every last shot was sharp where it should have been but many had no light in the eye or the bird had its back to me so those are the ones I deleted.<\/p>\n

If I hadn’t read and anticipated the behavior of this bird I’d have missed the entire series. It does pay to know the behaviors of your subjects.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Predicting the behavior of this Western Meadowlark allowed me to get a boat-load of very interesting action shots.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39057,"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":[3,393,6,334,370],"tags":[31,2939,47,490,2348,566,669,311,323],"class_list":["post-39046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bathing-bird-behaviors","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-western-meadowlarks","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-anticipating-behavior","tag-bathing","tag-burst-rate","tag-canon-7d-mark-ii","tag-catch-light","tag-sturnella-neglecta","tag-utah-2","tag-western-meadowlark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/western-meadowlark-3492-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-a9M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39046","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=39046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}