Best thing about Fall

[dankearl]

The big guys are back in the Northwest.
Taken this morning.
Hundreds of them.
1/640
f6.3
iso400
600mm

DSC_2435sh.jpg

[Daniel Cadieux]

Lucky you...I only see them from 300 yards away over here! Nice walking pose and grassy/field habitat. The crane is rather cramped in the frame though. A wider comp (at least bottom and right), or having flipped the camera for a vertical with more room a bove and below, would have been great.

[dankearl]

Daniel, the minute I posted I regretted the crop.
Here is more room and more vertical.
I can get fairly close, but Sandhills are skittish and in the big flocks, it just takes one to
go and they are off.
I got flight pics, but they were all flying away.
I am going to spend more time tomorrow trying to get a few, they are only here for a couple of weeks.
I saw one snow goose today, so they are beginning their migration.
A very good BPN member has offered to help me process if I can get a decent flight shot.
I need all the help I can get!

DSC_2435nx3.jpg

[Ron Sprunger]

Very nice. I kinda liked the closer crop, or maybe something half way between. Maybe stay vertical but bring it down a little from the top, both right ant left. I saw three of them in Yellowstone a month ago, but could get no closer than two hundred yards, after an hour's effort. They were still pretty brown. Great color on this guy, and a very nice capture.

[Randy Stout]

Dan:

Good looking crane. More brown/rust on him than we usually see in Michigan.

Ours are really moving around now, but the fields haven't been picked yet, so they will hang around for a while yet.

I like the foot up pose,angle in frame and background.

Cheers

Randy

[Tom Rambaut]

I like the repost - real sense of bird in it's environment. Lovley colours in the wing neck area. We have a simular bird called a Brolga.

[Arthur Morris]

Is the image in Pane 3 from a horizontal original???

[dankearl]

Arthur, yes, here is the full frame original with a quickie process.
Had I not clipped one, I would have posted full frame.
Kind of embarrassed at how I did this, but was shooting quick before they turned and flew.


DSC_2435ff.jpg

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks. It makes a fine vertical crop. The problem in Pane 1 is that you clipped the feet.

What camera body?

[dankearl]

Arthur, Nikon D7000.

[Arthur Morris]

Arthur, Nikon D7000.

Thanks Dan, It would seem that there should be a fast way to move the sensor to one side so that you could get both birds in the frame, one on each side; that would have been ideal :)