The Wall of Birds

[Joerg Rockenberger]

Blast off yesterday morning at the cut corn field in Bosque courtesy of a coyote chasing through the resting flock. Turned out that there were actually 3 coyotes at the same time in the field. How these birds avoid colliding and hurting each other upon take-off is beyond me...

And what a blast it was in Bosque last week. Stay tuned. JR

Canon 1DMkIV, 500F4IS, 1.4TC, 1/4000s, F7.1, ISO 400, Manual Exposure, Gitzo Tripod w/ Mongoose 3.5a

[Pieter de Waal]

Wow it must be awesome to witness a take off like this and you have captured the moment IMHO. The clear birds blending with the blurred birds to create the sense of a mass blast off. Nothing like it here.

[Andrew Merwin]

Neat image. Are you aware that there are 2 sand hill cranes, perhaps 3, amongst all the snow geese?

[Mark Young]

Awesome image. I like the sense of depth you've got here.

[Waqar Amin]

Looks amazing. seems they just escape from a farm :p.

[Tim Munsey]

Love this image, fantastic stuff.

Tim

[Joerg Rockenberger]

Thank you all for the kind feedback. I noticed today that the image posted on BPN looks a bit more contrasty and with some of the whites blown compared to what I remembered the original to be like. Went back to check and... yep, the save-for-web process introduced clipped highlights. Sorry about that.

JR

[Joerg Rockenberger]

Neat image. Are you aware that there are 2 sand hill cranes, perhaps 3, amongst all the snow geese?

Hi Andrew, yes there are 3 in the foreground. But the grey spots in the background on the left side are all cranes as well. Most of the time only the snow geese are taking off in a blast off while the cranes stay behind. In fact, I saw one coyote walking through a bunch of cranes who kept their distance but didn't fly away.

JR