A thousand bad head angles

[John Chardine]

Jeff C$ and are are rounding out his trip with a couple of days at Dorchester Cape with the Semipalmated Sandpipers. They have been truly amazing. In the 25+ years I have been visiting the site, I have never seen so many. And for the past 2 days they are been largely left alone by the Peregrines.

Despite the lack of Peregrines, the roosting flocks still occasionally blast off, and they do this away from you towards the water. Then you wait for them to return and have 1000 great head angles!

Full frame. Sharpened after resampling for BPN.

Date: 19 August, 2012, Time: 1347h
Camera: Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Lens: EF400mm f/4 DO IS USM, @ 400 mm
Program: Manual
ISO 800, 1/400s, f/5.6
Exp. comp.: 0.0
Flash: off

[Kerry Perkins]

John, how did you get so many of them to have the same wing position? Cool image and you have to wonder who starts the frenzy... Looks like you guys had a great trip. looking forward to more of the images.

[John Chardine]

Thanks Kerry. Now you mention it they do look quite coordinated in their wings. The norm these days is to have the blast-offs initiated by a Peregrine attack. However, along with the amazing numbers of sandpipers the last couple of days- 200,000 to 300,000- there have been few Peregrines. In this case the sandpipers do it to themselves. A few may start to fly away from the flock and for what ever reason this quickly builds a chain reaction in the birds. Terns do the same thing.

[Ian Cassell]

... trying to think how you can fix the head angles in PS ...

I love this one, John. It sort of reminds me of the snow goose blast offs at the Bosque.

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Really love this image. Not something you see all the time!

[John Chardine]

Thanks everyone. The plan was to post "1000 good head angles" but I haven't got to it yet.