Before switching to digital cameras, I spent decades parsimoniously snapping shots on 24- or 36-shot rolls of film, not wanting to waste anything. But digital cameras have freed us from such restraints, which has been a particular boon to us photographers who delight in photographing swift-winged birds.
As I walked at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm this morning, I kept getting hits from Merlin on grasshopper sparrows in a section where the central dirt path bisecting two big fields approaches the woods. As usual, I swept the fields, straining to find one of these uncommon sparrows without luck, although I did hear their buzzy calls a couple of times.
At one point, I spotted a sparrow sitting on a stalk a good way off the path. I couldn’t make it out and figured it was another of the many song sparrows and field sparrows whose melodies routinely fill the fields. I took a couple of shots anyway, then trudged on for what would be a two-mile circuit that I’ve made many times before.
When I got home and pulled the images up on screen, I found two frames of the sparrow and was initially puzzled. The bird’s breast and head were relatively plain, and the wings had a tiered look about them. That’s when I realized it was almost certainly a grasshopper sparrow, which Merlin confirmed.
I’ve taken better grasshopper shots from closer up, but I got a small birder’s high on realizing that I’d captured a couple of frames of a bird I occasionally hear and infrequently see, let alone photograph. And I didn’t burn any film in doing so!
The Jersey Birder 