I didn’t chance it and spent the morning by myself. But I wasn’t alone, for the meadows at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge were alive with the songs of savannah sparrows. Every little bit you’d see one of these little brown birds singing its heart out. I had the refuge to myself for the first hour after sunrise, so I parked the car and let the songs wash over me.
It’s a good thing I wanted to sit for a while and listen to the sparrows sing praise, for it took me a while to get the picture I wanted. The plant the sparrow is perched on was the tallest in the meadow, so I knew one of the sparrows would be using it. I didn’t have to wait long for one to show up and serenade me, but it often had its back to me — because of course it wasn’t singing to me, but to the other sparrows in the meadow.
The plant was a ways off the road and with a little bird like a sparrow, I needed to use a 2X teleconverer with a 500mm lens. I thought I’d like the vertical format best given the long slender stalks, but as it turns out I prefer the horizontal shots I took, I like the out-of-focus meadow in the background. With savannah sparrows, they really put their full body into the song towards the end of the song, so you have to wait to take the picture until they’re already in mid-song.
In the spring, our savannah sparrows might be seen singing their little hearts out from any high point in a meadow, anything raised even slightly from the ground, from man-made structures like fence posts to plants like teasel or even a low-to-the-ground blackberry vine.
|
Frosty the Sparrow
Winters in Oregon's Willamette Valley are pretty mild, the near constant cloud cover traps heat near the earth and at night temperatures rarely dip below freezing. Of course even we get the occasional frost (not to mention the occasional ice or snow storm). This frosty sparrow spent a cold morning near a pond at Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge.
|