{"id":42141,"date":"2016-09-14T08:16:34","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T14:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=42141"},"modified":"2016-09-14T08:16:34","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T14:16:34","slug":"bathing-western-meadowlark-curtain-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/14\/bathing-western-meadowlark-curtain-call\/","title":{"rendered":"Bathing Western Meadowlark – Curtain Call"},"content":{"rendered":"

And no, the “curtain call” reference isn’t for reasons of modesty…<\/p>\n

This past spring I photographed this Western Meadowlark bathing in a puddle on Antelope Island after a rain and soon after I posted a few photos of its performance. But I have so many images of this behavior that are sharp and interesting I thought some more of them deserved to see the light of day. So this post will be the bird’s curtain call.<\/p>\n

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\"western-meadowlark-3413-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

I didn’t see the bird near the puddle as I approached in my pickup so I scared it off but it didn’t go far and I thought it might return so I simply waited for it to do so. It was intent on bathing and sure enough it hopped back into the middle of the puddle. Here the meadowlark is checking me out before…<\/p>\n

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\"western-meadowlark-3415-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

making multiple frenzied attempts to get each and every feather wet.<\/p>\n

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\"western-meadowlark-3421-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

It kept a suspicious eye on me even in the midst of its contortions except when…<\/p>\n

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\"western-meadowlark-3450-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

its head was in a position where it was impossible.<\/p>\n

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\"western-meadowlark-3461-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

I thought this unusually shaped column of water brought up by its beak was interesting.<\/p>\n

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\"western-meadowlark-3464-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

In several of these shots we see double catch lights in the eye – something that isn’t unusual when there’s water in front of the bird and the sun is behind me. The top one is a direct reflection of the sun while the smaller catch light at bottom is a reflection of the sun off the water.<\/p>\n

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\"western-meadowlark-3498-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

The action was fast and furious – even at 1\/4000 sec I didn’t have quite enough shutter speed to get the end of the wing sharp (though some of the softness there may be a depth of field issue).<\/p>\n

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\"western-meadowlark-3552-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

At the end of the bath the meadowlark turned its back on me as if to provide it some semblance of modesty. And then it left the puddle.<\/p>\n

Sorry about the late post this morning – more damned “technical issues”. It’s been a “hair-pulling” morning, even for this old bald guy…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: Specs for these images were: 1\/2500-4000, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + Canon EF 1.4 III Extender<\/em><\/p>\n

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

And no, the “curtain call” reference isn’t for reasons of modesty…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42148,"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":[3,334,395,370],"tags":[31,47,566,3111,669,311,323],"class_list":["post-42141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-western-meadowlarks","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-bathing","tag-catch-light","tag-davis-county","tag-sturnella-neglecta","tag-utah-2","tag-western-meadowlark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/western-meadowlark-3498-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-aXH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42141","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=42141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}