Tag: great blue heron

Great Blue Heron Landing Series (13 images)

Yesterday morning I decided to break with one of my long-standing traditions and brave the potential crowds by visiting one of the more popular birding sites in the area on a weekend – Glover Pond near Farmington Bay WMA. One of my goals was to locate and photograph the Little Blue Heron that has been hanging around in the area for the last couple of weeks. That bird is causing a lot of excitement in the birding and photography communities because it’s so far out of its range. I never did find that heron but this one more than made up for it.

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Great Blue Heron On Ice

Around here life is tough on our herons when temperatures turn frigid. Finding open water for fishing is almost impossible and nights are long and difficult to survive without much food in the belly

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A Compositional Conundrum

I intended this post to be a single image for my “Just A Shot That I Like” feature.  It didn’t turn out that way. Six days ago I found this Great Blue Heron on the edge of a small, partially frozen creek with an almost vertical snow bank directly behind and very close to the bird.  The heron was patient with me and I was close so I tried a variety of compositions using my 500 mm and 100-400 mm lenses.  The incredibly fast shutter speeds were because of the bright snow and my forgetfulness in adjusting settings as I was juggling two cameras and lenses. In the end I couldn’t decide which composition I preferred so I’m presenting three of them here.      1/5000, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, natural light  This relatively tight vertical shows good detail on the bird and I like the close view of the swirly marks on the snow behind the heron made by a wing as it landed.       1/3200, f/7.1, ISO 500, 100 – 400 @ 400mm, natural light Some folks gravitate toward whole-bird reflections so I’m also including this composition.  Ideally I’d prefer the bird to be slightly further left in the frame but cropping off the left makes the image too narrow vertically for my tastes and I have no more room on the right (image was taken vertically and is close to full frame).     1/6400, f/5.6, ISO 640, 100 – 400 @ 400mm, natural light A horizontal composition with the heron slightly smaller in the frame shows more of the…

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Great Blue Herons On Snow and Ice

Christmas Morning at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge was nothing short of spectacular.  We had great light,  wonderfully clear blue skies and lots of birds.  And it was cold – as low as 6 degrees F.  Perfect! On this trip (which included the Promontory Point area) we saw a plethora of raptors – Bald and Golden Eagles, Red-tailed Hawks, Rough-legged Hawks, American Kestrels, Short-eared Owls, a Prairie Falcon and one Barn Owl hunting in daylight because of the cold.   And I’ve never seen as many Great Blue Herons in one relatively small area as I did on that morning.  Just before I stopped to take this photo there were over 100 of them on the ice of the canal to the right and along the far bank in less than 1/3 mile – which led to a topic of conversation.  Mia is from Florida and we discussed how seeing Great Blue Herons on snow and ice seems incongruous to many folks from warmer climates.  That conversation was the inspiration for this post.     1/4000, f/6.3, ISO 400, 500 f/4, natural light  As is typical for western herons, these birds were difficult to approach (in some areas like Florida one can almost walk up and touch them at times).  This juvenile was fishing in a patch of flowing water surrounded by ice and snow.      1/2500, f/6.3, ISO 400, 500 f/4, natural light Then the same bird flew off and then came back to land within a few feet of where it had been fishing – almost like it was…

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A Birthday Bounty Of Bear River Birds

Wednesday of this past week was my “medicare birthday”.  I’m sure older readers will understand why my psyche needed some bolstering and I felt justified in burning up some extra gas and putting even more miles on my pickup for a trip to Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge to help take my mind off of my advancing age.  It was worth the trip!  While I didn’t get any truly spectacular shots it was a wonderful morning with excellent weather and light, lots of cooperative birds and great company – thanks to Mia.  The only downside was that I had 35 gigs of images to cull when I got home… A couple of notes about my techs:  a), regular readers are probably aware that I nearly always shoot with the 1.4 tc attached to my 500 mm.  On this morning I got so close to many of the birds that almost half of the images I’ve posted here were taken without the tc and b), many of these images were taken with a very high shutter speed which is typical for me since I’m usually set up for action shots after firing off a few times on more traditional poses. All photos are presented in the order they were taken.  1/1250, f/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc On the road to the refuge we came across a pair of Short-eared Owls cavorting in the air right after the sun came up.  One of the owls was “sky dancing” but by the time I got the pickup…

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