organised chaos

[John Chardine]

Here is another image of (mainly) Semipalmated Sandpipers at Johnson's Mills, New Brunswick on the Bay of Fundy. In recent years the number of raptors that consider these shorebirds as food items has dramatically increased. These are mainly merlins and peregrines. The result is that at high tide when the mudflats are covered in water and the sandpipers should be resting, they are constantly taking flight from the beach in "dreads" such as this.

I picked this image because it was clean top and bottom and more or less clean to the left and right. I removed a couple of unconnected wings from the sides of the image and cleaned up the beach a little.

Canon EOS 40D, 500mm f4
capture date: Friday, August 1, 2008 2:19:21 PM
exposure program: Aperture Priority
ISO speed: 400
shutter speed: 1/6400
aperture: f4.0
exposure bias: +0.7 (because of bright water and backlight)
metering: Pattern
flash: OFF

[Fabs Forns]

Not shabby :) although I liked the undulation of the flock better in the other one. It must be a treat to see the flocks!

I like that you keep clean edges.

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Very nice image. Do u have other snaps with slightly slower shutter speeds. The motion blurr in wings flapping might be interesting to see...

[Judd Patterson]

Hey John, nice work. It's great to see so many sandpipers in flight at once, but I'm not sure about your choice to remove some of the unconnected wings. With a couple slight exceptions, the flock now appears to be nearly a rectangle...and that just seems odd for a bird flock (not impossible, but unusual). It also appears to decrease the size of the flock because there is no spillover outside the image. It's tough to say exactly without seeing the original, but I thought I'd at least share my thoughts

[Milo Burcham]

Great to see migrating flocks in the fall. Wish we had them as well as the spring gathering! I wish for a little stronger pattern in shots like this, and the clean right edge does seem unlikely as mentioned

[John Chardine]

Thanks for all the commentary. Curious thing is I didn't remove anything from the straight line of birds on the right- my fault for cropping there. This week should see lots of birds.

[Arthur Morris]

Hye John, You are tempting me. Maybe they should shoot the falcons or trap and gas them so that the shorebirds can get some more rest. (Sarcasm intentional.) The falcons, however, are quite good for the flock photography... The area needs a beach clean-up. Once the flocks get larger are they often photographed against the sky.

I look forward to seeing more of these.