{"id":23543,"date":"2014-04-29T05:43:25","date_gmt":"2014-04-29T11:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=23543"},"modified":"2014-04-29T05:43:25","modified_gmt":"2014-04-29T11:43:25","slug":"a-bird-of-a-different-feather-along-the-antelope-island-causeway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/29\/a-bird-of-a-different-feather-along-the-antelope-island-causeway\/","title":{"rendered":"A “Bird” Of A Different Feather Along The Antelope Island Causeway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six days ago I had a rude awakening at the entrance station to the Antelope Island causeway.<\/p>\n

First let me set the stage.\u00a0 Antelope Island is a state park which is accessed by a 7 mile long causeway and road.\u00a0 That causeway “belongs” to Davis County, even though the entrance station to the park is at the beginning of the causeway.\u00a0 Said another way, you pay your\u00a0Antelope Island use fee at the entrance station and then drive, walk or bike the\u00a0seven miles of causeway road before you actually access the island and enter the state park.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 100mm<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Last Wednesday morning I was stopped at the entrance station before driving the causeway road to the island when this airplane began flying extremely low over the station in multiple passes.\u00a0 The plane is apparently equipped as a spray plane (crop duster) but in the\u00a0entire time I watched and photographed it I could never see spray coming from the plane.\u00a0 It’s possible that the pilot was “reconnoitering” the area for later spraying of the phragmites along the mudflat edge but that’s only a guess.<\/p>\n

Each of these seven images was taken while I was standing on the asphalt within about 25′ of the entrance station.\u00a0 Notice that most of them were taken at 160 mm or less so the perspective is not significantly distorted by long focal lengths.\u00a0 Images are presented in the order they were taken.<\/p>\n

 
\n\"airplane<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 100mm<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the electronic information sign next to the entrance station as the plane made one of its first passes, loud and very low.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 115mm<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The pilot seemed\u00a0at least as\u00a0interested in the two people pointing lenses at him\u00a0as he was in what he was doing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 160mm<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0After making a pass he would make a banking turn and then come back and do it again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 330mm<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This shot gives one a pretty good idea of how low and close to the entrance station he was as he passed over the beginning of the causeway road multiple times.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 150mm<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Here the plane is coming directly at me from the north.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @ 340mm<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I looked up the N-Numbers on the FAA Registry site and the registered owner of the plane is Wells Fargo Bank Northwest NA Trustee.\u00a0 Here you get a pretty good look at the apparent spray\u00a0equipment beneath the plane, though once again this airplane did not seem to be actively spraying.<\/p>\n

As I drove west on the causeway toward the island\u00a0the pilot few alongside me over the mudflats in an apparent display of his displeasure at being photographed.<\/p>\n

For safety reasons I question how low and close this pilot was flying to the entrance station and a public road.\u00a0 When this occurred there happened to be no other traffic in the immediate vicinity and there were only three people at the entrance station but traffic is often backed up at the entrance as folks wait to pay their entrance fees,\u00a0the nearby parking lots are often full of vehicles and visitors and the road to the island is busy.\u00a0 On that very morning as I left the island there were two school buses full of kids in the parking lot and vicinity.<\/p>\n

Consider the following from the FAA’s own website:<\/p>\n

“The risk of crashing an agricultural spray aircraft is very high and accident rates are many time higher than for general aviation. Risks include G-LOC syndrome (loss of consciousness due to high g-forces), tree and wire strikes, spatial disorientation during turns, and low altitude stalls.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

And as a nature photographer I also don’t particularly appreciate the disturbance of the many birds in the area by this very low and loud plane.\u00a0 The vicinity of the entrance station is loaded with birds this time of year and this experience couldn’t have been pleasant for them.<\/p>\n

What this pilot did may very well be perfectly legal (or not?).\u00a0 But I don’t have to like it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

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

Six days ago I had a rude awakening at the entrance station to the Antelope Island causeway.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23549,"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":[334,16],"tags":[31,539,1992,1993,1994,1991],"class_list":["post-23543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-photography-ethics","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-causeway","tag-crop-dusting","tag-faa","tag-safety","tag-spray-plane"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/airplane-1281-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-67J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23543","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=23543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}