{"id":61131,"date":"2018-07-11T04:38:41","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T10:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=61131"},"modified":"2018-07-11T05:10:02","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T11:10:02","slug":"a-celebratory-lark-sparrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/11\/a-celebratory-lark-sparrow\/","title":{"rendered":"A Celebratory Lark Sparrow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some folks might wonder why I would celebrate a Lark Sparrow but for me this classy looking (for a sparrow at least)\u00a0songbird was a bit of a milestone.<\/p>\n

Because of issues with my bad back and related factors I hadn’t been out shooting for 8 days! <\/em>and it was driving me bonkers.\u00a0In the last ten years the\u00a0only other\u00a0time I remember going that long without my camera in my hand and birds in my viewfinder was when I\u00a0flew to Florida to be with my daughter Shannon in the hospital after her traumatic brain injury (TBI).<\/p>\n

But yesterday morning there was a chance for decent light (we’re in the middle of our monsoon season so clouds are always iffy) and I thought I could do it so I just did and my chosen destination was Antelope Island. It was very hot and birds were slow but this\u00a0Lark Sparrow and one other bird\u00a0saved my morning.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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>\n

And he was a ‘happy’ little bird, singing away in the\u00a0oppressive heat. I quite like this photo – the light on the\u00a0sparrow is evenly distributed (although it wasn’t before he turned his head to this angle), the detail is good, the background is clean, I have a nice catch light and I think it’s a lovely singing pose. And I adore the harlequin face of this species. My one significant\u00a0nit was that the Tintic Quartzite perch was too bright so I selectively brought down it’s exposure during processing. Nope, the piles of bird poop don’t really bother me. Poop happens.<\/p>\n

I’ll admit that one of the reasons I chose to go to the scorching island instead of into the much cooler mountains is because\u00a0two days ago\u00a0there was a report of a Brown Pelican on the periphery of the island. I was skeptical of that report because a Brown Pelican in Utah would be extremely rare (check out a range map and you’ll see what I mean)\u00a0but with birds you never know and this pelican\u00a0was reported\u00a0to be\u00a0a young one\u00a0and youngsters\u00a0can more easily go astray. So even though I\u00a0seldom chase rarities that report did figure into\u00a0the equation when I was deciding where to go.<\/p>\n

But I didn’t see hide nor feather of\u00a0that pelican\u00a0so I’m sure glad I\u00a0spotted this Lark Sparrow.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Some folks might wonder why I would celebrate a Lark Sparrow but for me this classy looking (for a sparrow at least) songbird was a bit of a milestone.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61132,"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":[3,334,367],"tags":[31,726,197,284,305],"class_list":["post-61131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-lark-sparrows","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-chondestes-grammacus","tag-lark-sparrow","tag-singing","tag-tintic-quartzite"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/lark-sparrow-4868-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-fTZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61131","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=61131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}