1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nI don’t recall having ever seen a bird more puffed up than this. Even though it wasn’t really all that cold that morning\u00a0the meadowlark\u00a0was obviously trying to keep warm in the snow so it erected its feathers about as far as they would go – to the point that the bird’s body, minus head,\u00a0is actually\u00a0significantly\u00a0wider than it is tall. At first glance the dimensions of the bird appear to be so distorted that to me it almost looks like the image has been compressed vertically.<\/p>\n
I wish we had this much snow now but sadly we don’t – this photo was taken on Antelope Island\u00a0just over two years ago. We had our first big snow-dump of the winter a week ago but nearly all of it in the valleys is now gone.\u00a0Our temperatures are more like early April than January and that trend is forecast to continue for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n
Birds have been unusually scarce all winter and I attribute that, at least in part, to climate change.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/stansbury-mountains-9949-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"stansbury-mountains-9949-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
There’s more snow in the mountains of course but the snowpack there is much less than normal. Yesterday morning I traveled west to the Stansbury Mountains in a quest for birds and light but I\u00a0was mostly skunked in both\u00a0arenas. In 3+ hours of (attempted) shooting this partial\u00a0light on the Stansburys was the only decent light I encountered until the last half hour and the only photos I got of birds\u00a0were three shots of a Rough-legged Hawk in poor light taking off away from me. They were deleted.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/peregrine-falcon-0269-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"peregrine-falcon-0269-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
The only ray of hope seems to be the female Peregrine Falcon I’ve seen a few times near the Jordan River. Late in the day yesterday we found her again on top of\u00a0this ugly power pole. Sometime soon\u00a0I’m hoping to\u00a0find her on a natural perch or feeding on prey on the ground for better photo-ops.<\/p>\n
If we’re not going to have any real winter this year I’m already looking forward to\u00a0spring and that’s sad.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This Western Meadowlark made me do a double-take.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56155,"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":[3,334,8,582,370],"tags":[31,1641,541,593,286,294,669,323],"class_list":["post-56152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-peregrine-falcons","category-western-meadowlarks","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-climate-change","tag-peregrine-falcon","tag-puffed-up","tag-snow","tag-stansbury-mountains","tag-sturnella-neglecta","tag-western-meadowlark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/western-meadowlark-11464-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-eBG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56152","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=56152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/western-meadowlark-11464-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"western-meadowlark-1464-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n