{"id":145871,"date":"2023-11-02T06:14:28","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T12:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=145871"},"modified":"2023-11-02T08:42:26","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T14:42:26","slug":"drake-gadwall-taking-off-and-in-flight-a-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/02\/drake-gadwall-taking-off-and-in-flight-a-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Drake Gadwall Taking Off And In Flight – A Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

A ten-photo series, plus a different version of two of them.<\/p>\n

This drake Gadwall was a little more tolerant of my approach in my pickup than most of the ducks I photographed two days ago at Bear River MBR. So with him I used a different strategy to anticipate his takeoff.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I could tell he was nervous about my approach but he didn’t fly off at first so I got a few shots of him on the water. Besides, with him facing in this direction I figured he wouldn’t take off because the breeze was coming from my right and ducks, if given the chance, will usually take off into the breeze or wind.<\/p>\n

But almost immediately after this photo was taken, he stopped swimming forward and turned around in the water to face the incoming breeze. That was my clue that he was probably going to take off, and soon.<\/p>\n

I was right.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Being able to anticipate his takeoff meant that the first shot in my burst captured him immediately after his feet left the water. Their takeoff is so fast I was pleased to catch him this early in the process.<\/p>\n

Starting with this shot, all photos are presented in the order they were taken without any skips.<\/em><\/p>\n

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A different composition of the previous photo, just because I like to see the entire water splash behind the bird. It’s their webbed feet pushing back against the water slightly before this photo was taken that gives them a big part of the explosive acceleration that allows them to become airborne so quickly.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I think of this wing position as their “crinkly-wing posture”.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

One of my two favorite shots of the series.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

A horizontal wing position. Maybe not the most photogenic posture but with flight, especially during takeoff, it comes with the territory.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

While I was processing this photo I became curious about what I was seeing hanging down from his lower belly directly in front of his foot. It seemed a little unusual, and I wasn’t seeing the same thing in the previous photos, so I…<\/p>\n

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had to have a closer look. It’s just wet feathers hanging down with water drops coming off them. No big deal, but it satisfied my curiosity.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Another crinkly-wing posture.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This may be my favorite photo (of mine) of a Gadwall in flight of all time. It’s quite similar to photo #5 but this one is marginally sharper, so I like it best.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

My successful run of sharp (or sharp enough) photos is about to come to an end.<\/p>\n

I was shooting through a ‘window’ of tall phrags on my side of the canal and in this shot we can see the hazy fuzziness on the right side of the frame that was caused by phrags in front of me that were about to come between me and the bird.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In this shot I’m shooting through the phrags, thus all the haziness. The bird is still sharp, thanks to the Canon R5 for that, but the photo was ruined. After this shot, because of the foreground phrags, I completely lost focus on the bird.<\/p>\n

Too bad, this last photo might have been one of my favorites of the series.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

A ten-photo series, plus a different version of two of them.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145881,"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":[338,6,334,1753,395],"tags":[49,1940,6214,7208,146,6925,211,6926,2738,311],"class_list":["post-145871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-gadwall","category-miscellaneous","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-bird-photography-technique","tag-canon-r5","tag-favorite-gadwall-flight-shot","tag-flight","tag-gadwall-drake","tag-male","tag-mareca-strepera","tag-takeoff","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/gadwall-3145-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-BWL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145871","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=145871"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145945,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145871\/revisions\/145945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}