{"id":1117,"date":"2011-01-15T11:43:41","date_gmt":"2011-01-15T17:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/?p=1117"},"modified":"2011-01-15T11:54:47","modified_gmt":"2011-01-15T17:54:47","slug":"57-degrees-and-sunny-ha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/2011\/01\/15\/57-degrees-and-sunny-ha\/","title":{"rendered":"57 Degrees and Sunny…ha!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago,\u00a0a photographer,\u00a0scheduled to attend\u00a0the\u00a0Rockport Whooping Crane Photo Tour the following week,\u00a0emailed to say she thought it would be best to\u00a0cancel since rain was\u00a0forecast for those days.\u00a0 I looked again\u00a0at the 10 day forecast and was reassured that both days were predicted to be sunny with a high each day of 57 degrees.\u00a0 With that information in hand, I convinced her to come on down.\u00a0 The rain wasn’t scheduled to start until after the photo tour.<\/p>\n

Well, the forecasters were off just a bit…we had highs of 42 and 39\u00a0degrees\u00a0for the photo tour with hard north winds.\u00a0 But, hey, it didn’t rain!\u00a0 The\u00a0cranes were abundant and active, but those poor\u00a0photographers\u00a0suffered every minute they were\u00a0on deck.\u00a0 The bitter cold\u00a0certainly took a lot of the fun out of that trip.\u00a0 A windy 40 degrees at Rockport is like a\u00a0dry 15 degrees at Bosque del Apache, N.M..\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

After photographing cranes in the mornings, we worked\u00a0other habitats for ducks, herons and songbirds\u00a0in the afternoons.\u00a0 Still, it was\u00a0mighty tough shooting with the cold wind and heavy clouds blocking most of the light.\u00a0 Some sample photos are included here, just to let you know it’s a great place to photograph in the winter, even when it’s cold.<\/p>\n

Click on the photos to open them in a larger and sharper format.\u00a0 You can also view them in order by clicking on “next” in the upper right corner.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Many<\/a>
Many of the endangered whooping crane pairs had young with them this winter.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That rusty colored bird in the middle is a young of the year.\u00a0 It will lose most of those reddish brown feathers by spring.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Whooping<\/a>
Whooping crane pairs with young were easily disturbed when others got too close to feeding territory boundries. Several times each day, we saw a fussy adult bird fly over to chase away the intruding cranes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With the wind and heavy cloud cover, we had to shoot with high ISO settings (ISO 800-1200) most of the time.\u00a0\u00a0On\u00a0a positive note,\u00a0that gave us a\u00a0reason to discuss “noise reduction” in Photoshop and how to sharpen after smoothing out the noise in digital photos.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>
This whooper was not the least bit disturbed by our presence while we enjoyed this close-up photo op.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"It<\/a>
It was encouraging to see the salt marshes around Aransas National Wildlife Refuge had a good crop of young blue crabs, the whoopers' primary winter food source.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
\"This<\/a>
This pair of whooping cranes provided us with many photography opportunities during 4 recent trips to Aransas Refuge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
The whooping crane shots were taken with a Canon 7D camera, Canon 500 mm IS lens, 1.4 X teleconverter (except the two close-up shots), Gitzo cf tripod and Wimberley head.\u00a0 I tried to keep a high shutter speed (1\/2,000 second when possible) on all occasions since the wind was strong and the light was limited.<\/div>\n
\n
\"Ruby-crowned<\/a>
Ruby-crowned kinglets were in a feeding frenzy during the cold weather. One got so close, I was able to pet it without disturbing its feeding activity.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Yellow-rumped<\/a>
Yellow-rumped warblers seem to be especially abundant in south Texas this winter.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"This<\/a>
This female northern shoveler banked at just the right time to give me this shot of the wing colors.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Drake<\/a>
Drake green-winged teal napping on the marsh at the Port Aransas boardwalk.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Great<\/a>
Great blue heron in a quiet pond.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
This great blue heron appeared to be in breeding plumage when I photographed it wading about a hidden pond at Port Aransas.\u00a0 There was no time to remove the teleconverter when I got this shot, so I missed the full reflection.\u00a0 That happens when one is working warblers and herons at the same location.<\/div>\n
I will be doing a photo talk the first Wednesday night of February at the La Posada Hotel\u00a0in Laredo for their second annual birding festival.\u00a0 Then,\u00a0\u00a0 I’ll be in Galveston for Featherfest the first week of April to do several workshops and tours.\u00a0\u00a0Read about it and sign up\u00a0at : http:\/\/www.galvestonfeatherfest.com\/PhotoFest_Descriptions.php<\/a><\/div>\n
God bless you all,<\/div>\n
Larry<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago,\u00a0a photographer,\u00a0scheduled to attend\u00a0the\u00a0Rockport Whooping Crane Photo Tour the following week,\u00a0emailed to say she thought it would be best to\u00a0cancel since rain was\u00a0forecast for those days.\u00a0 I looked again\u00a0at the 10 day forecast and was reassured that both days were predicted to be sunny with a high each day of 57 degrees.\u00a0 With … Continue reading 57 Degrees and Sunny…ha!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1117"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1136,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions\/1136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}