{"id":134328,"date":"2023-04-20T05:38:19","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T11:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=134328"},"modified":"2023-04-20T07:56:44","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T13:56:44","slug":"black-crowned-night-heron-takeoff-and-flight-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/20\/black-crowned-night-heron-takeoff-and-flight-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Black-crowned Night Heron Takeoff And Flight Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

A busy and rather unattractive background but I like the bird in spite of it.<\/p>\n

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When I found this Black-crowned Night Heron yesterday morning at Bear River MBR ‘he’ was partially obstructed by dead phrags while he was perched but I hoped to eventually get flight shots if and when he took off. It took a while but this time my patience paid off.<\/p>\n

This photo and the following 10 are sequential without any skips but after that there was a hiccup or two. Once again I’ll try to keep my narration to a minimum.<\/p>\n

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Takeoff commences.<\/p>\n

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Pushing off.<\/p>\n

This photo gives us our first good look at both of his twin white nuchal (nape of neck) plumes, that bounced around into various positions during his flight.<\/p>\n

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Liftoff.<\/p>\n

It almost looks like that one phrag tip is about to poke him in the eye. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d closed his nictitating membrane to protect it.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

His takeoff was more complicated than it might appear because he had to negotiate phrag stems on both sides of him, which…<\/p>\n

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\"\"he managed to do with precision. I was also appreciative of his very slight head turn toward me that…<\/p>\n

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contributed to his red eye being the focal point of the viewer, and of the active focus point of my camera.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

He’s trying to clear the phrags so he can curl off to his left and away from me but…<\/p>\n

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those phrags are easily 8′ tall so…<\/p>\n

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it took him a while.<\/p>\n

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Finally, he’s gained so much elevation that the phrags are beginning to thin out up top, so we’re beginning to get glimpses of blue water back there.<\/p>\n

In the next shot in the burst I clipped his wings at the top of the frame so I’m not including that photo.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

In the shot after that, thanks to his horizontal wing position I got him fully in frame again.<\/p>\n

But that was the last of my good luck. After this photo I lost focus on him for 13 shots. By the time I reacquired sharp focus he’d…<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

cleared the phrags and was beginning to turn away from me. The blue in this photo is all water, with a horizontal band of far-away phrags directly below the heron. I’ve cropped the image as I have in an attempt to show his elevation relative to the tips of the phrags below him.<\/p>\n

Yes I know, I posted 19 photos two days ago and 13 today and that’s almost certainly overkill. But it isn’t every day that I can keep a flying bird in frame and in focus for that many shots and I do think there’s some value in seeing the takeoff and flight progression in stop-frame.<\/p>\n

Right or wrong, that’s my rationale. And my excuse<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: Image techs for these photos were in the range of 1\/2500 – 1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc,.<\/em><\/p>\n

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A busy and rather unattractive background but I like the bird in spite of it. (13 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[338,334,1126],"tags":[49,716,146,6377,1127,250,1723,2738,311],"class_list":["post-134328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-black-crowned-night-herons","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-black-crowned-night-heron","tag-flight","tag-nuchal-plumes","tag-nycticorax-nycticorax","tag-phragmites","tag-phrags","tag-takeoff","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/black-crowned-night-heron-0201-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-yWA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134328"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134394,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134328\/revisions\/134394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}