They're back!

[John Chardine]

What a treat to have the Semipalmated Sandpipers back in the area on their annual migration to northern South America! It's still early in the migration period and flocks are building. Today we had about 40,000.

Here's a "blast-off", caused by mass-panic in the roosting birds (not caused by your's truly, they were perfectly happy with me hidden in the bushes). They are often worried by raptors of various sorts but do this even in the absence of a proximate stimulus.

This is a crop and trust me there was no place to do so and not cut birds so I just held my nose and did it. The original cut birds too. I ran Levels and sharpened. Hope you like it. Comments welcome!

Canon EOS 50D, 500mm f4
capture date: Sunday, 2 August 2009, 11:35 AM
exposure program: Manual
ISO speed: 400
shutter speed: 1/1000
aperture: f6.3
exposure bias: +0.0
metering: Pattern
flash: OFF

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Cool pattern and great that the frame is evenly filled with birds and we can also see water in the BG. I only wish they would fly towards you.

[denise ippolito]

John, This is beautiful! I love the colors in the BG peeking thru and the mass of Sandpipers is amazing to see!! I might take a small slice off the bottom to eliminate the 2 OOF FG birds. Really nice to see this!!

[arash_hazeghi]

Excellent capture, love the BG. I might sharpen a bit more.

[Brian Zwiebel]

John, This is awesome! What a feast for the eyes and imagination. I agree with the slight bottom crop suggestion. Good Shooting!

BZ

[Adams Serra]

Hi John,
How far south do they actually travel?

[Bill Foxworthy]

I think this is absolutely fantastic. I love also the sharpness of the wings especially in the center line of the image. There seems to be more OOF birds along the top and wonder if you tried a crop down a little to get more in focus birds? It is still a beautiful image which way it is!!

[Ed Cordes]

Wonderful that they are returning. You managed to capture the feeling of the return quite well. I like how many are in focus and in how many of them the eyes are visible.

[Arthur Morris]

With frames full of birds you will of course cut lots of birds with the frame-edges. The key in these situations just might be making the image when all the birds are coming at you rather than angling away. One of these years....

[Nancy A Elwood]

John the water BG makes this for me!!! I like this a lot!

nancy

[John Chardine]

Thanks for all the good comments. The red-brown colour is the Bay of Fundy mud being churned up by the waves at high tide. The main food of the sandpipers- the mudshrimp or Corophium volutator- lives in tubes each builds in this mud.

[Harshad Barve]

I loved this as presented , awesome image
TFS

[Randy Stout]

John:

Impressive display here. I always appreciate the back story.

I agree with others about a bit of a crop. For me, the top area that has lots of OOF birds in the background would be my choice to crop from.

In retrospect, you might have been able to bump up your ISO and use a smaller aperture for greater DOF.

Usually these shots happen when you have been setup for a different shot, and wham, there they go, so you do the best you can! And you did very well here.

Cheers

Randy

[John Chardine]

Hi John,
How far south do they actually travel?

Adams- From colour-marking we know that Bay of Fundy birds fly non-stop for about 4 days and reach ne. South America- French Guiana and Surinam. There they feed on animals in the tidal mud flats much as they do up north. We think some may go south as far as the coast of Brazil but we don't have many recoveries from there.

[Adams Serra]

Adams- From colour-marking we know that Bay of Fundy birds fly non-stop for about 4 days and reach ne. South America- French Guiana and Surinam. There they feed on animals in the tidal mud flats much as they do up north. We think some may go south as far as the coast of Brazil but we don't have many recoveries from there.

Hi John,
some of them were photographed on the edges of Rio Negro in the Amazon.

[david cramer]

This is very nice... just the right amount of contrast and sharpness. It's filled with movement.

[Dave Barnes]

I like this a lot. Moment well captured, must be great to see.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

What an image and sight to behold! I greatly envy you. I have never ever in my life witnessed a spectacle as unique as this! Congratulations!

[Kiran Poonacha]

Such a beautiful frame.. congrats...

[Simon Bennett]

Fabulous image John - well exposed and sharp and super content. I wonder how a bit of a pano crop might work?

[Connie Mier]

I love it!

[sree.kumar.h]

Wonderful. I must have been a fantastic sight.

[John Chardine]

It is really quite remarkable! And we are at only a fraction of the birds to arrive in the next week or two. This is all very fleeting though, as the birds are really visible like this only once or twice a day at high tide (maybe for 3 hours at each tide) and the migration season is only about 3 weeks long.