{"id":17304,"date":"2013-07-31T04:00:15","date_gmt":"2013-07-31T10:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=17304"},"modified":"2013-07-30T18:19:23","modified_gmt":"2013-07-31T00:19:23","slug":"greater-sage-grouse-in-the-centennial-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/31\/greater-sage-grouse-in-the-centennial-valley\/","title":{"rendered":"Greater Sage Grouse In The Centennial Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"

I believe I’ve only photographed Sage Grouse twice – both times this year.\u00a0 An earlier post I did on this species was\u00a0largely documentary because the images weren’t of top quality but I wanted to feature the Sage Grouse Initiative, a bold and innovative effort to save this\u00a0grouse from extinction.\u00a0 But last week in Beaverhead County, Montana I got some shots of them I like.\u00a0 This is one of them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I was driving the dirt roads while on the lookout for raptors (mostly) when out of the corner of my eye to the far right I saw (just barely)\u00a0a flock of Mallards flush up from the barrow pit next to the road and just a few feet away.\u00a0 I gave them a quick glance\u00a0and drove on but a couple of seconds later Mia hollered out from the back seat her patented “Stop! Birds.”, which I immediately did.\u00a0 Turned out they weren’t Mallards, they were Sage Grouse – about a dozen of them.<\/p>\n

We were able to photograph them in a field of bulls for a minute or two before they flew off.\u00a0 This was one of my favorites from the session.\u00a0 I was excited to get images I like of them – particularly because of their near-endangered status.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/a><\/p>\n

I sometimes like to include a shot taken with a different camera that shows the setting from a broader perspective, despite the danger of diminishing the intrigue or mystique of the featured image(s).\u00a0 There was at least one more grouse in the group, out of frame to the left.<\/p>\n

This is an area of\u00a0Montana with stark contrasts.\u00a0 The relatively barren hills in the background are so very different from the beautiful, high mountains very close behind me.<\/p>\n

I love all of it.<\/p>\n

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

I was driving the dirt roads while on the lookout for raptors (mostly) when out of the corner of my eye to the far right I saw (just barely) a flock of Mallards flush up from the barrow pit next to the road and just a few feet away. I gave them a quick glance and drove on but a couple of seconds later Mia hollered out from the back seat her patented “Stop, bird!”, which I immediately did. Turned out they weren’t Mallards, they were Sage Grouse – about a dozen of them.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17305,"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":[334,1558,1493],"tags":[779,555,1560,220,1598],"class_list":["post-17304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-greater-sage-grouse","category-montana-favorite-locations","tag-beaverhead-county","tag-centennial-valley","tag-centrocercus-uophasianus","tag-montana-2","tag-sage-grouse"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/sage-grouse-3882-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4v6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17304","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=17304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}