{"id":147308,"date":"2023-11-28T06:03:09","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T13:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=147308"},"modified":"2023-11-28T07:11:56","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T14:11:56","slug":"red-winged-blackbird-one-stands-out-amongst-many","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/28\/red-winged-blackbird-one-stands-out-amongst-many\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-winged Blackbird – One Stands Out Amongst Many"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something a little different from me today. A lot different, actually.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning, after a long drive to get to my birding destination, I drove about 65 additional miles (slowly) while looking for birds. In that 65 miles I saw a half dozen huge flocks of Red-winged Blackbirds, each flock consisting of several thousand birds.<\/p>\n

Interestingly if not unexpectedly this time of year, I never once saw a blackbird that wasn’t part of a flock, which meant I typically drove for 10 miles or so without seeing a single blackbird and then I’d see a flock of many thousands. Every last blackbird I saw was “flocked up”.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/5.6. ISO 800, Canon R5,<\/em> Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

They were mostly adult females or immature birds, with only a few adult males sprinkled in.<\/p>\n

It was mostly a waste of time to try to photograph them, for two reasons: 1, my super telephoto lens has extremely narrow depth of field so very few of the masses of birds in flight were sharp, and 2, they were always feeding amongst dried sunflowers but not on the sunflowers themselves. Instead, most of them were foraging on the ground at the base of the sunflowers where I couldn’t see them. The flock would circle low over the sunflowers and then disappear on the ground, with only a few birds perched temporarily on the sunflower stalks.<\/p>\n

However, I did get one photo out of several hundred that I thought had possibilities. But it was a stretch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

And it’s all because of the pose of one female, amongst hundreds of birds in the frame. I love her posture with her wings up and her tail twisted vertically and the way she’s using her right foot to bend the stalk and pull the flowerhead toward her.<\/p>\n

But this version of the photo has been drastically cropped, resulting in significantly diminished image quality.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So I decided to try a looser crop with a different composition. Even though there’s a lot of birds in this version, my eye immediately goes to the afore-mentioned female because she’s sharp while most of the others are soft, she’s centered in the frame and because she’s isolated with about a half dozen other birds surrounding her. She’s definitely the center of attention.<\/p>\n

Not a perfect solution but I think it’s an interesting one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Just so you know, this is what I had to work with – the full frame (uncropped) version of the photo.<\/p>\n

I’m probably trying too hard to save a flawed photo just because I’m enamored by the pose of one bird out of many. But that’s part of the fun of bird photography. If nothing else, it keeps me involved and entertained.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Something a little different from me today. A lot different, actually. (4 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147310,"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":[6,334,392,390],"tags":[1936,916,7226,137,146,7227,7228,264,1686],"class_list":["post-147308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-red-winged-blackbirds","tag-agelaius-phoeniceus","tag-composition","tag-creative-composition","tag-female","tag-flight","tag-flocked-up","tag-photographing-flocks-of-birds","tag-red-winged-blackbird","tag-sunflowers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/red-winged-blackbird-6905-horizontal-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-CjW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147308","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=147308"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147371,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147308\/revisions\/147371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}