Pipits at dawn

[dadas115]

This morning I woke up to cloudy skies and light rain/drizzle but the temperature was nice so I decided to stop by a nearby park on my way to work. As long as the rain isn’t too hard I will try to shoot even though the conditions are far from optimal. After checking the now defunct warbler spot and the lake without seeing anything of interest I headed over to a bare field to see if there were any hungry birds there this morning. I was rewarded with a decent flock of American Pipits (~30 or so birds). I spent my entire time crouched next to a bush watching the small birds hop around and scour the grass for tasty morsels. At one point I had a bird come so close I thought it was going to hop up in my lap! It was quite entertaining to watch the birds feed and interact. Once in a while one would approach another too close and resulting in some pipit calls and a short chase.

Here are a few shots of what I saw. All pictures were taken with my Rebel XTi and Sigma 500mm f/4.5 EX.

The first shot is from my close encounter.
ISO 400 (I thought I was on 800 at the time), f/4.5, 1/25 sec

Next is an attempt to depict the characteristic pipit tail-bobbing.
ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/25 sec

The third is my impression of an American Pipit through the eyes of another American Pipit.
ISO 800, f/4.5, 1/100 sec

Finally a shot of the early bird’s worm
ISO 800, f/4.5, 1/125 sec

The actual eating of the worm was fairly interesting. It started with the bird beating the worm on the ground until its insides started to ooze out. After a thorough beating the bird gobbled the worm down in what seemed to be less than a second. When I first saw the worm I though the bird might have trouble swallowing something so large but it really didn’t seem to be a problem.