{"id":98540,"date":"2021-05-22T04:44:16","date_gmt":"2021-05-22T10:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=98540"},"modified":"2021-05-22T04:52:52","modified_gmt":"2021-05-22T10:52:52","slug":"lark-sparrow-gathering-nesting-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/22\/lark-sparrow-gathering-nesting-material\/","title":{"rendered":"Lark Sparrow Gathering Nesting Material"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lots of it. She found the mother lode of nesting material.<\/p>\n

Three days ago I photographed a Lark Sparrow as she was gathering nesting material in the west desert. She was close but she was usually partially hidden by grasses in front of her so these photos are only meant to document her behavior.<\/p>\n

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When I first saw her I had no idea she had nest-building in mind. She flew down to the scrub habitat below her and…<\/p>\n

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\"\"when she came back up and landed on a different portion of the fence she had nesting material in her bill. I believe the sparrow in these first two photos is the same bird but I can’t be sure. I’m referring to her as a female because in this species only the female constructs the nest.<\/p>\n

In this photo I’ve placed her high in the frame so we can get an indication of how long the nesting material is. Notice that it extends all the way to the bottom of the frame.<\/p>\n

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Then she found the mother lode of nesting material – an extremely weathered old juniper stump with bark and wood fibers peeling off of it. Apparently she thought that juniper wood fibers are the ideal nesting material because she went just a little bit nuts trying to get as much of it in her bill as possible.<\/p>\n

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She poked around that old stump for quite a while. I had the impression that she was sometimes discarding some of the nesting material in her bill and replacing it with new pieces that she was picking up but I can’t be sure of that, even by looking carefully at my photos.<\/p>\n

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Here she’d picked up so much nesting material it obscured much of her face and blocked the catch light in her eye.<\/p>\n

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It was a challenge to focus on the bird with all the grass in front of her. Typically I use a single ‘normal’ focusing point but my camera has an option to use what I call the “micro-focusing point” with an extremely narrow sensitivity that comes in really handy in situations like this.<\/p>\n

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Soon after this photo was taken she flew off, presumably to her nest. I can see why, it looks like she had about all the nesting material she could handle.<\/p>\n

I adore Lark Sparrows. I find their the unique marking on their faces, sometimes called “harlequin faces”, both interesting and appealing and some of their courtship behaviors are completely unique among songbirds. Cornell’s Birds of the World describes them this way:<\/p>\n