Western Meadowlark, Sage Creek Valley, Badlands NP, South Dakota
There is a bird you may always see while visiting Badlands National Park, the Western Meadowlark. Making a successful click and telling the story of this beautiful bird is another story. I found them many times just beside the gravel road but quite often they camouflage very well in the grass and we can see them only after they take off. Today’s photo was made during a hiking trip along Sage Creek. As so often, I heard the meadowlark before the bird came into sight. A perfect blurred background was due to the bird’s location at the edge of the steep banks of Sage Creek. The Eastern Meadowlark, that we can find here in Eastern Iowa, looks very similar. The best way to distinguish between both species is looking at their malars. The Western Meadowlark’s malars have yellow in it while the eastern’s is mostly white.
Preferring the environmental photo over the “eyeball shot” you can imagine I was very happy with this picture. Moments I consider the “great ones” in life…