{"id":24201,"date":"2014-06-02T05:13:28","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T11:13:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=24201"},"modified":"2014-06-02T05:13:28","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T11:13:28","slug":"sage-grouse-at-eye-level","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/02\/sage-grouse-at-eye-level\/","title":{"rendered":"Sage Grouse At Eye Level"},"content":{"rendered":"

During our Montana camping trip last week several of our excursions took us over some dirt roads in Idaho.\u00a0 On one of\u00a0them, because of a high bank in the road, we found ourselves at eye level\u00a0with a small group of very wary Greater Sage Grouse.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/9, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0I thought being at eye level with these\u00a0grouse was slightly unusual and it gave me a background I like even though it made\u00a0it difficult to get\u00a0completely unobstructed views of the birds.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0This one seemed slightly more curious than it was afraid of my truck and it maintained its relatively open position in the thick cover for some time.\u00a0 It wasn’t until it squatted down slightly…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0that I realized that there was a much more timid companion right behind it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/13, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0I wanted to get both birds in the same image and sharp but obviously at this point I had a depth of field problem.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/640, f\/16, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Slowly both grouse changed their relative position and eventually I was able to get both of them relatively sharp at f\/16 but…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/320, f\/22, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

f\/22 seemed to work even better.\u00a0 It’s not often that I even attempt to photograph birds at shutter speeds as slow as this – it’s a very good thing that they both\u00a0held still for me and that I had my lens braced properly\u00a0on my\u00a0“Noodle” window mount.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Then both birds slowly disappeared into the thick grass and sagebrush.<\/p>\n

Sage Grouse have been in the news a lot lately because of the looming decision about providing federal protection to these seriously declining birds.\u00a0 It’s a hot topic because doing so would remove their management from the states and hand it over to the federal government.\u00a0 In fact Utah has recently awarded a\u00a0two million dollar contract to\u00a0anti-predator lobbyist Ryan Benson\u00a0to fight the\u00a0Sage Grouse listing in congress.<\/p>\n

Sometimes my home state of Utah\u00a0frustrates and embarrasses me.\u00a0 This is one of them.\u00a0 In my opinion this move by Utah politicizes what should be a scientific decision.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Last week we found ourselves at eye level with a small group of very wary Greater Sage Grouse.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24207,"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":[334,8,1558],"tags":[1560,105,2031,2032,2033,2034,1598,311],"class_list":["post-24201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-greater-sage-grouse","tag-centrocercus-uophasianus","tag-depth-of-field","tag-greater-sage-grouse-3","tag-idaho","tag-noodle-window-mount","tag-ryan-benson","tag-sage-grouse","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/sage-grouse-5775-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6il","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24201","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=24201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}