{"id":14847,"date":"2026-04-26T16:56:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T20:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/?p=14847"},"modified":"2026-04-26T16:56:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T20:56:22","slug":"lapland-longspurs-04-26-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/?p=14847","title":{"rendered":"Lapland Longspurs, 04\/26\/26"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s not necessarily very easy to see a Lapland Longspur in breeding plumage. You can travel during the breeding season to the arctic tundra across North America, Europe, and Asia – areas such as Alaska, northern Canada, northern Scandinavia, Russia, or coastal Greenland. See the pink highlights on the range map below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Or you can stay local and head out to the black dirt in mid to late April and try to get really lucky. Readers of the blog know that Lapland Longspur is among my very favorite species; I search for them all winter long and in April I try to see them in their fabulous breeding plumage. And I’ve had some success over the years, and this weekend I got lucky again and found a handful of Lapland Longspurs associating with a flock of Horned Larks. Two of the birds were in beautiful breeding plumage, but unfortunately, in spite of my efforts on both days, I never had the birds close enough for quality photos. Here’s my best effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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~Lapland Longspur in the Black Dirt Region, 04\/26\/26.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It was back in April of 2023 when I got super lucky and finally got a decent shot. I was was very excited at the time; it was a great day for me. Here’s another look at that bird:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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~A look back to 2023: Lapland Longspur in the Black Dirt Region on 04\/23\/23.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On a separate note, I wanted to give a shout out to birding bud Silas Wareham. Silas is an excellent Orange County birder and photographer. He has an online photography newsletter, Raw Nature<\/a>, that I encourage everyone to visit and subscribe if you like what you see (you will). Here is lovely shot that I pulled from Silas’ site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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~American Robin photo by Silas Wareham… see more good stuff like this here<\/a>. ~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not necessarily very easy to see a Lapland Longspur in breeding plumage. You can travel during the breeding season to the arctic tundra across North America, Europe, and Asia – areas such as Alaska, northern Canada, northern Scandinavia, Russia, or coastal Greenland. See the pink highlights on the range map below. Or you can … Continue reading “Lapland Longspurs, 04\/26\/26”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23,6,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-black-dirt","category-orangecounty","category-rarities"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5i3kT-3Rt","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14847"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14857,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14847\/revisions\/14857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}