The Story
On June 29, 2017, I photographed this Eastern Meadowlark (Sturnella magna) at La Florida near Bogotá, Colombia. It occurs from eastern North America to northern South America. Its song is a series of pure, melancholy whistles. Adults have yellow underparts with a black V on the breast and brown, black-streaked upperparts. La Florida is a wetland and park known as the Parque Metropolitano La Florida, near the Bogotá River. It nests on the ground, in a shallow depression covered with a roof woven from grasses.
I used a Canon EOS 70D and the EF400mm f/5.6L USM for this one, at 1/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200. IUCN lists the Eastern Meadowlark as Near Threatened with a decreasing population, and Bogotá had about 150,000 hectares of wetlands in 1940, of which only about 1,500 remain.
©2018 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Eastern Meadowlark (Sturnella magna) belongs to the family Icteridae (Troupials and Allies) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2020), with the population trend listed as decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List