{"id":83754,"date":"2020-04-08T04:59:56","date_gmt":"2020-04-08T10:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=83754"},"modified":"2020-04-08T05:11:01","modified_gmt":"2020-04-08T11:11:01","slug":"lark-sparrow-struggling-with-cumbersome-nesting-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/08\/lark-sparrow-struggling-with-cumbersome-nesting-material\/","title":{"rendered":"Lark Sparrow Struggling With Cumbersome Nesting Material"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the epitome of “biting off more than you can chew.”<\/p>\n

The only way I can visit Antelope Island this spring is through my older photos. This one was taken in May of 2016. I posted other images of this sparrow four years ago but this one is new to my blog.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/6.3, 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>\n

Male and female Lark Sparrows are similar but since only females build nests my presumption is that this bird is a female. I watched her through my lens as she was obviously searching for something in the grasses. During the nesting season they eat both insects and seeds so at first I figured she was foraging for food but instead she picked up this long, thin twig.<\/p>\n

Her attempt to drag the twig through the thick vegetation was epic. The twig kept hanging up in the grasses but she was determined to get it into a clear spot where it was no longer entangled so she could fly off with it. Here she paused for a moment to assess the situation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A different crop of the same photo gives us a better sense of just how long the twig really was and why it kept hanging up in the vegetation. There’s even more of the twig out of frame at lower left.<\/p>\n

It really was a nearly impossible task and even though she worked at it for quite a while she eventually gave up and flew off without the twig. There would be many hundreds of pieces of nesting material in her nest by the time she completed it and she would have done all of that work without any help from her mate.<\/p>\n

I’m exhausted just thinking about it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Perhaps the epitome of “biting off more than you can chew.”<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83763,"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":[3,334,367,391],"tags":[31,726,137,5036,197,311],"class_list":["post-83754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-lark-sparrows","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-chondestes-grammacus","tag-female","tag-gathering-nesting-material","tag-lark-sparrow","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/lark-sparrow-7300b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-lMS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83754","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=83754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}