These fighting sandhill cranes were photographed during my recent trip to New Mexico.
There were lots of tightly packed birds in this field which led to fairly frequent little skirmishes. The problem was that the quarrels almost always consisted of exactly one jump in the air like this and then the birds parted ways. If you waited until you saw the jump somewhere in the flock, there was no way to get on it fast enough to capture it. The only way to get the shot was to dedicate myself to that one purpose, ignore all other activity, and just slowly scan the flock back and forth repeatedly while looking through the lens hoping that I would happen to be fairly close by when one of the jumps occurred. As you can imagine, it was a lot of scanning and not much shooting but there was enough activity that with enough patience and persistence, the method would eventually pay off. The other complication was being able to maintain autofocus on the eye of one of the jumping birds when it was being drawn like a magnet to the contrast of the corn in the background. I have many images of slightly out of focus fighting cranes and razor sharp corn :-(
Posted at only 1024 pixels to try to get reasonable jpeg quality and stay under 400KB.
Excellent image. Very nice action captured. I like the wing position of both the cranes and HA's. Dried grass in the BG as well as cranes in FG looks nice.
In all spectacular frame.
Great moment, Mike. Your perseverance paid off and was worth the wait. I can only imagine how tough this was to get the timing and focus right. I wonder if toning down the highlights just one notch would help.
I like the setting, sharpness, composition and how they are just high enough out of the flock to have their heads clear of the corn. The merging bills works for me as well, emphasizing the intent for contact. Very well done Mike!
Fighting Sandhill Cranes
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