{"id":1886,"date":"2012-06-27T17:14:31","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T22:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/?p=1886"},"modified":"2012-06-27T17:35:33","modified_gmt":"2012-06-27T22:35:33","slug":"breakfast-in-a-sorghum-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/2012\/06\/27\/breakfast-in-a-sorghum-field\/","title":{"rendered":"Breakfast in a Sorghum Field"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past\u00a0three days, I\u00a0was hiding in a sorghum field at sunrise and\u00a0trying to capture\u00a0images of doves on the wing.\u00a0 Smack in the middle of McAllen,\u00a0a five acre patch of grain\u00a0was attracting\u00a0white-winged doves, Eurasian collared-doves, mourning doves, rock doves and\u00a0whistling ducks.\u00a0 It wasn’t \u00a0like being in Mexico where thousands of doves would have been swarming, but\u00a0the action was good\u00a0and I had\u00a0lots of fun.<\/p>\n

Each shoot was done\u00a0with the Canon 500 mm IS lens and\u00a0the Canon 1D Mark III and Canon 7D cameras.\u00a0 Of course, I love the “multi-frames per second” capability of both cameras, but the Mark III, at 10 fps, is hard to beat.\u00a0\u00a0Its autofocus is faster than that of the 7D, but\u00a0either was\u00a0very capable of\u00a0delivering what I needed with\u00a0this type shooting.\u00a0 The tripod stayed in the car.\u00a0\u00a0I was photographing passing and landing birds, so everything\u00a0had be done in the “hand-held” mode.\u00a0\u00a0Most of the time, I was\u00a0seated\u00a0on a low folding stool with the sun behind me.\u00a0 The lens came up only when birds were closing in.\u00a0 Within minutes after sunrise,\u00a0the shutter speed was\u00a0at 1\/2500\u00a0second\u00a0with ISO\u00a0640.\u00a0 Auto-focusing\u00a0worked best with all focusing points activated for both cameras because I had clear sky for most backgrounds.<\/p>\n

Shooting in the city meant the backgrounds weren’t always great… cars, signs, etc..\u00a0\u00a0I\u00a0did some cloning on a few photos, but most were clean from the start.\u00a0 Here are some of the shots I liked best:<\/p>\n

Click in the upper right corner of a photo to get a sharper, clearer image.\u00a0 You can also advance or see the previous shot from there.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Adult<\/a>
Adult white-winged dove landing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
White-winged Dove starting a second pass before landing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Why they are called "white-winged" doves.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Dropping in for breakfast.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Black-bellied whistling ducks can land on sorghum heads and feed just like doves.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Eurasian Collared-Doves are common in south Texas and share the grain fields with several other dove species.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Rock Dove looking for white-wings. They preferred feeding with the other doves.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Many white-wings fed on the heads of grain rather than landing in the rows to feed on the ground.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
White-wings even use their "thumbs" for braking. I'd never noticed that before.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
It was difficult to hide well enough to get the wary doves to land within photo range.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Adult white-winged dove perched on sorghum seed-head.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
White-winged dove circling the field.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
White-winged dove dropping into grain field.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Larry<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past\u00a0three days, I\u00a0was hiding in a sorghum field at sunrise and\u00a0trying to capture\u00a0images of doves on the wing.\u00a0 Smack in the middle of McAllen,\u00a0a five acre patch of grain\u00a0was attracting\u00a0white-winged doves, Eurasian collared-doves, mourning doves, rock doves and\u00a0whistling ducks.\u00a0 It wasn’t \u00a0like being in Mexico where thousands of doves would have been swarming, … Continue reading Breakfast in a Sorghum Field<\/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-1886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886","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=1886"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1906,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions\/1906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}