Many folks think of Ring-necked Pheasants as strictly ground dwelling birds but that’s simply not the case. These pheasants regularly roost in trees at night and the following morning they will often be active in the roost tree for up to an hour before descending to the ground for the rest of the day.
1/800, f/8, ISO 800, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc
Virtually every time I’ve seen these birds in trees it’s been on very cold, sunny mornings so I’ve always had the impression that they’re sunning themselves to warm up a bit. Usually they flush to the ground for cover before I can get close enough for quality photos but this cooperative male apparently decided that his chill was more of a threat to him than I was. He let me shoot away from close range for quite a while even though he was perhaps 20′ up in the tree and on a very exposed branch.
Long-tailed birds like pheasants and magpies can present difficult compositional problems when cropping for presentation but I though this vertical crop worked out well with him on the diagonal perch.
Ron
My gosh, it looks like blown glass.
One would never get such an open shot like this back East. A very shy and secretive bird usually seen after inadvertently flushing one, and only briefly as it flies for cover. Beautiful bird, great image.
Gorgeous Ron!
The vertical crop/diagonal perch worked extremely well. Thank you.
Ron:
The vertical crop works extremely well. Another educational (for me) post and, as usual, another beautiful image.