{"id":22897,"date":"2014-03-27T05:46:53","date_gmt":"2014-03-27T11:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=22897"},"modified":"2014-03-27T05:50:09","modified_gmt":"2014-03-27T11:50:09","slug":"mated-pairs-of-sandhill-cranes-in-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/27\/mated-pairs-of-sandhill-cranes-in-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Mated Pairs Of Sandhill Cranes In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sandhill Cranes are exceedingly graceful in flight, especially when it’s a mated pair flying in tight formation.\u00a0 Pair-bonded cranes often\u00a0seem to enjoy flying as close to each other as possible.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4 II, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I include this\u00a0shot to illustrate my point. This mated pair was coming in for a landing and at first the larger male on top was on the left side of the female but as they descended he\u00a0slid over the top of her so closely that I thought they might collide, but of course they didn’t.\u00a0\u00a0 The wingspans of these birds can exceed 7′ but they seem to know precisely where every feather is at any given moment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sandhill<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4 II, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The “flight intimacy” of paired sandhills can make it difficult for the photographer to get good separation of the birds (which is usually the ideal).\u00a0 Here the\u00a0cranes are not completely separated but since the wing of the female is shaded behind the head of the male I think his head stands out well anyway.\u00a0 I do wish we could see her legs and feet but that would mean sacrificing the wing position of the male that I like.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sandhill<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4 II, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Despite the fact that these cranes are slightly past me I really liked the light and the contrasting backgrounds of the two birds.\u00a0 This image was taken just after sunrise and light doesn’t get much warmer than this (perhaps a little too warm for some tastes).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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

1\/1000, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4 II, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

If this image looks familiar it’s because I posted another shot of these two birds a couple of weeks ago, though the wing positions of both birds are the opposite of what they were in the\u00a0earlier image.\u00a0 As this mated pair descended for a landing the male was “talking” to his mate.\u00a0 This seems to be a common occurrence when bonded birds are about to land among other cranes already on the ground.<\/p>\n

Each of these images was taken two weeks ago in Wayne County, Utah.\u00a0 I won’t soon forget my time with these loud, graceful and sometimes comical birds.<\/p>\n

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

Sandhill Cranes are exceedingly graceful in flight, especially when it’s a mated pair flying in tight formation. Pair-bonded cranes often seem to enjoy flying as close to each other as possible.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22900,"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":[334,391,1128],"tags":[146,1129,743,311,317,1909],"class_list":["post-22897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-sandhill-cranes","tag-flight","tag-grus-canadensis","tag-sandhill-crane","tag-utah-2","tag-warm-light","tag-wayne-county"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/sandhill-crane-9650-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5Xj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22897","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=22897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}