{"id":23000,"date":"2014-04-01T06:44:50","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T12:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=23000"},"modified":"2014-04-01T06:44:50","modified_gmt":"2014-04-01T12:44:50","slug":"sandhill-crane-threat-displays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/01\/sandhill-crane-threat-displays\/","title":{"rendered":"Sandhill Crane Threat Displays"},"content":{"rendered":"

I photographed a variety of Sandhill Crane behaviors\u00a0several weeks ago in Wayne County, Utah but among the most interesting was the aggressive displays of the males.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer:\u00a0 These images were taken on a cloudy morning so the light was poor.\u00a0 To get enough shutter speed I was shooting at ISO 640 and then to exacerbate the problem for lack of time I\u00a0sharpened these images globally\u00a0rather than\u00a0selectively so there’s obvious noise in the backgrounds.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Based on behavior and size I believe each of these two birds to be males.\u00a0 Though the bird on the left is facing away from the other one this display was directed at the crane on the right.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0I believe that this\u00a0display is a threat\u00a0pose\u00a0that researchers call the “ruffled bow”.\u00a0 I was amused by the bow-legged posture of the bird on the right as it observed the threat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The second bird responded with its own threat pose.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0And then came\u00a0a response to the response by the first crane.\u00a0 As it did so the other crane reached to the ground and momentarily seemed to pick at something on the ground with its bill.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Each bird did this several times.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Finally the bird on the right picked up…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

a small clod of dirt or bit of straw but quickly flung it away.\u00a0\u00a0 This is a common behavior among\u00a0cranes during displays and I\u00a0witnessed it several times.<\/p>\n

Sometimes actual fights broke out during these displays but usually\u00a0one bird would quickly fly off to avoid the fracas.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/640, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 17 – 85 @ 85mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I include this image to give you a feel for the setting and the light that morning.\u00a0 The cranes would fly in before sunrise\u00a0to feed in the agricultural field and usually Canada Geese would come in later.\u00a0 Over the four days the number of cranes varied from 13 to 33 – there were more birds than this just out of frame.<\/p>\n

Both aggressive displays\u00a0between males and courtship dancing between\u00a0bonded pairs were common and I was somewhat surprised how difficult it often was to distinguish between the two behaviors.<\/p>\n

Sure was fun to watch though…<\/p>\n

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

I photographed a variety of Sandhill Crane behaviors several weeks ago in Wayne County, Utah but among the most interesting was the aggressive displays of the males.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23003,"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":[334,394,1128],"tags":[1934,1129,1935,743,304,311,1909],"class_list":["post-23000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-sandhill-cranes","tag-aggressive-display","tag-grus-canadensis","tag-ruffled-bow","tag-sandhill-crane","tag-threat-posture","tag-utah-2","tag-wayne-county"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/sandhill-crane-7157-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5YY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23000","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=23000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}