Eastern Meadowlark.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I've not had much luck with this species historically, but the last couple of weeks I've encountered two different cooperative individuals. This one was particularly bold and perched almost too close - it was not the fence post I was hoping for but it did the job nicely anyhow. I like how this fella splayed its' tail feathers for this particular song delivery.

Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/640s., f/8, ISO 400, natural light, handheld from car, cropped for comp, the outermost piece of bark at left of the perch was originally touching the tail feather it is pointing at - cloned it shorter (I lucked out that the other spike right of it wedged nicely between two other feathers without touching them!). Darkened pupil, lightened iris. Audio used.

[Karl Egressy]

I can relate to your excitement about getting one or two this close. Nice singing pose and I like the weathered post perch, Daniel.

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Congratulations!, Daniel. I've been trying to get close to these guys for two years. You not only got close, but look at that remarkable calling pose, head slightly turned, sharp, tail feathers splayed, nice perch, not to mention the green into blue sky BG.



Geoffrey

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Awesome image Dan! Great work getting in close & superb calling pose, nice BG and terrific detail.

[Shawn Zierman]

Great image to study the details of the species and the splayed tail is very cool. The sky portion at the top of the frame takes the success of the image up a notch. A 100mm less focal length or so and you could have squeezed the whole perch into focus, but man the image is pretty darn close to perfect in all other regards.

[Satish Ranadive]

Gorgeous image. Love the display of singing pose. Excellent IQ, beautiful colors, nice details, lovely backdrop and composition.

Regards,
Satish.

[Sidharth Kodikal]

Excellent IQ, calling pose and BG. Very nice weathers perch too. Very nice!

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Good calling pose, light and bird. Yes, they are not very cooperative but now that I see you are using playback with them may be I can try with our individuals here and see what happens.

[Greg Oakley]

Great singing pose with awesome detail, Daniel

[David Salem]

I love Larks and have a fair amount of them in my area. Every now and then you get a brave individual that lets you get close in the car as they are engrossed with calling. Great looking pose, detail and BG and that perch looks perfect. Love the eye work. Adds allot of life to the lark. Well done Daniel

[Frank Schauf]

Beautiful portrait, great details and sharpness.