{"id":1592,"date":"2012-01-13T17:38:01","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T23:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/?p=1592"},"modified":"2012-01-14T16:08:16","modified_gmt":"2012-01-14T22:08:16","slug":"two-days-with-the-whooping-cranes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/2012\/01\/13\/two-days-with-the-whooping-cranes\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Days with the Whooping Cranes"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, I took four other photographers to the Rockport-Fulton area of the Texas coast to photograph endangered whooping cranes on their wintering grounds at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.\u00a0 It’s been a tough winter for the birds, even though there is a record number (over 300) of them in that area.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With the severe drought conditions, blue crab (the cranes’\u00a0preferred winter diet) production was almost nil this summer and fall.\u00a0 Consequently, the birds were\u00a0moving inland to feed in\u00a0 burned areas where other food\u00a0was more readily available.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We could see U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fire crews\u00a0conducting prescribed burns\u00a0while we\u00a0were photographing\u00a0 (you will notice smoke in the background of some of the photos that follow).\u00a0 Food resources in the burns help sustain the birds, but they make it mighty hard for photographers\u00a0confined to boats in the waterways.\u00a0 Nevertheless,\u00a0we\u00a0 got plenty of\u00a0photo action and left with some\u00a0pleasant memories.<\/p>\n

Here are some shots from the whooping crane trip:<\/p>\n

\"Adult<\/a>
Adult whooping crane in flight.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is a series of flight shots taken\u00a0under stressful circumstances for yours truly.<\/p>\n

\"Whooper<\/a>
Whooper pair circling near our boat at mid-morning.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Whooping<\/a>
Whooping crane pair in flight.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Fourth<\/a>
Fourth shot of a whooping crane flight series.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I am leading a bird photography group, they depend on me to read the birds’ body language\u00a0to anticipate what\u00a0will happen next.\u00a0 In this case, the birds simply walked out of the water and took off…no craning of the necks or bugling.\u00a0\u00a0I had the\u00a0photographers alerted\u00a0that something unusual was going to happen, but I didn’t have time to get my own equipment adjusted for\u00a0this\u00a0series of\u00a0flight shots.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These shots were done at ISO 400, \u00a01\/8000 second @ f 4.\u00a0 Each of the frame filling photos appears to have adequate depth of field, but I would have preferred something more like 1\/2000 second @ f 11.\u00a0 \u00a0I was using my trusty\u00a0Canon 7D camera shooting at 8 frames per second, a Canon IS 500 mm lens, Wimberley head and Gitzo 1348 cf tripod from the\u00a0deck of a large boat.\u00a0\u00a0Suspecting a take-off was eminent, I\u00a0quickly removed a 1.4X teleconverter and remounted the lens.\u00a0\u00a0There was no time to release all the tightened Wimberley\u00a0knobs before the\u00a0birds were\u00a0in the air.\u00a0 As a result, I had to lift camera, lens and tripod into the air as I swung and panned with the birds in flight…not an easy task, but I did it.<\/p>\n

\"Pelicans<\/a>
Pelicans take off with prescribed burn smoking in the background.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
\"Are<\/a>
Are these pelicans accustomed to boat traffic?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Both previous photos were made with the Canon 1D Mark III and Canon IS 100-400 mm lens hand held.\u00a0 I keep this rig ready while shooting with the big lens because it allows me more versatility for flight shots and large birds\/mammals.\u00a0 I should have grabbed it for the whooping crane flight sequence.<\/div>\n
\n
\"Brown<\/a>
Brown Pelican shaking off water after a bath at Port Aransas.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Northern<\/a>
Northern Harrier at a Port Aransas marsh.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Northern<\/a>
Northern Harrier cruising above the cattails at a Port Aransas marsh.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Both harrier photos were made with the Canon 7D camera and Canon 500 mm lens, hand held\u00a0to\u00a0improve my ability to keep\u00a0the bird in the view finder.<\/div>\n
\n
\"A<\/a>
A juvenile white ibis with small crab at Goose Island State Park, Texas.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Announcing Change of Location for the April\u00a04-6 Prairie Chicken Interpretive Photo Tour!<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n
The April\u00a04-6 Lesser Prairie Chicken Interpretive Photo Tour has been moved to Canadian, Texas.\u00a0 We will have\u00a0the most experienced prairie chicken photo guide available for this one, so don’t miss it.\u00a0 This shoot is limited to four photographers and two of the slots are already spoken for, so sign up quickly if you are serious about this trip.\u00a0 More details will be available soon on my web site Photo Tour Schedule.<\/div>\n
\n
\"Lesser<\/a>
Lesser Prairie Chickens dueling on the lek.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Watch for another Newsletter soon,<\/div>\n
Larry<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, I took four other photographers to the Rockport-Fulton area of the Texas coast to photograph endangered whooping cranes on their wintering grounds at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.\u00a0 It’s been a tough winter for the birds, even though there is a record number (over 300) of them in that … Continue reading Two Days with the Whooping Cranes<\/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-1592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1592","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=1592"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1614,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1592\/revisions\/1614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}