10 May, Briones Regional Park, near Orinda Contra Costa County, California. Today I took my Ornithology class on a field trip to Briones Regional park. This Lazuli Bunting was fairly distant, but the colors came out well enough that I thought I would share. This species name comes from the blue gemstone lapis lazuli. They are persistent singers and it used to be thought that each male learned a specific song by the age of 2 years and that the individual crystallized song was forever. However recent research has revealed that older males who are unsuccessful at obtaining a mate can change their song so that it resembles the song of nearby successful males, thus trying to impersonate their rivals and fool the females. Post processing includes noise reduction using the "Noise Ninja" Photoshop plugin. Panasonic DMC-LZ5 / Nikon FS 3 / 30XWA / hand-held, no adapter.