18 thoughts on “P52 48/52 Meadow Lark”

    1. Thank you so much Myriam! Meadow Larks are fairly common out in the country here, but getting a decent image isn’t quite as easy as seeing them. They’re so skittish! It was really nice having the longer reach of the 600mm lens while birding for this trip. Without it I wouldn’t have been able to make this image.

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      1. Technology really does enrich the birding experience. Glad you had a 600mm with you and the skill to use it. I picked up a book about prairie birds at the library recently. It had a tiny painting of a Meadow Lark on the cover. Something about its coloring and long beak really appealed to me. The book turned out to be really interesting. The author wrote beautifully about prairie birds. He made the prairies sound lovely, though I had always thought of them as endlessly flat and endlessly dull.

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        1. I also thought of the prairies in the same way, but there’s a lot of wildlife out there I’ve learned.

          I hope to get out birding with a super tele again. I want to try the Sigma Sport lens, and Nikon’s newest 200-500mm too. I love gear! 🙂

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            1. Renting gear has been a boon to me for being able to try lenses before purchasing any, and for using the super telephoto lenses that I wouldn’t ever be able to afford or justify when photographing wildlife.

              Reading the manual was such a chore in the beginning because for me it was all in Greek, after I started to get the hang of my camera or lenses the manuals began to making sense.
              Today when I get new gear I carry the manual with me for the first month or so just to be able to look up how to do something if I don’t know how to get to a particular function.

            2. Thanks for explaining your process and making it sound doable :-). I’m not quite ready to spend money on a DSLR yet but I think it would be fun to work with a tripod sometimes, like in low light for non-moving subjects or when I need to wait a long time for a bird to open its wings or turn its head so its eye catches the sun. I definitely need to learn about the ISO thing… I think that is one of the keys to getting a clear image of a moving bird. Maybe. I should get a book!

            3. There are tripods even for iphones! I don’t know which camera you have but if it has a little hole on the bottom of it you can mount it to a tripod. I love my tripods!

              Yes, ISO is an important part to keeping the shutter speed up high enough to stop or freeze action. Birds just move all the time. I try to keep my shutter speed at 1/500sec when shooting wildlife. Higher is better but gray and overcast days, or near the end of the day when the light is low it’s tough even to keep 1/500th sec going.

              There’s plenty of stuff online so you don’t need to buy a book just yet. 🙂

              If you have manual modes shoot in manual priority, f/8 on sunny days, ISO as high as you can tolerate it. For example: My D300s I don’t like to shoot over ISO 500 on overcast days because it tends to have a lot of noise. Sunny days I can push it higher.
              On gray days you’ll want to open up your aperture to let in more light, and keep your ISO up a bit to keep up the shutter speed.

              If you have all auto/scene modes use the sport mode. Hope this helps a little.

            4. Thanks Deborah :-). Once the weather warms up a bit, I will play with ISO on sunny and cloudy days and see what happens. I have a Canon SX530 HS and it does have a little hole in the bottom!

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