Glacier Ridge Meadowlarks

The last day of spring break was Easter Sunday. We took Emma for a walk and did some casual birding. It was cold and windy and very late in the day, but I wanted to test some different camera settings to see if I could get a better focus at long distance.

By avoiding the convenient presets and setting my AF to one specific dot, I was able to improve the focus quite a bit - especially on things that aren't moving. I also changed the ISO from 100 to 400 for the low light conditions.




We saw and heard about 10 Eastern Meadowlarks toward the end of our walk. They were hard to spot unless they were facing us, but this fellow gave us quite a show.








He was quite a long ways away, but I was able to get a focused picture. The meadowlarks perch on a little tussock of grass and sing a beautiful melody.








You can see how hard it would be to find this against the grass unless he's facing you.









There were a lot of red-winged blackbirds singing around the park, also.

Their epaulettes are very bright right now.