{"id":25553,"date":"2014-08-04T07:05:27","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T13:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=25553"},"modified":"2014-08-04T07:51:39","modified_gmt":"2014-08-04T13:51:39","slug":"great-blue-heron-landing-series-13-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/04\/great-blue-heron-landing-series-13-images\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Blue Heron Landing Series (13 images)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning I decided to break with one of my long-standing\u00a0traditions and brave the potential crowds by visiting one of the more popular birding sites in the area on a weekend\u00a0– Glover Pond near Farmington Bay WMA.\u00a0 One of my goals was to locate and photograph the Little Blue Heron that has been hanging around in the area for the last couple of weeks.\u00a0 That bird is causing a lot of excitement in the birding and photography communities because it’s so far out of its range.\u00a0 I never did find that heron but this one more than made up for it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/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<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It’s virtually unheard of for me to get this many sharp shots of a landing bird in relatively good light\u00a0with no body parts clipped,\u00a0interesting flight postures and a good look at the eye.\u00a0 In addition I only had to add canvas to one of the thirteen images to make the composition acceptable.\u00a0 I’ll provide very little narration and let the images speak mostly for themselves – for better or for worse.\u00a0 All images are presented in sequence.<\/p>\n

By the time I saw the\u00a0heron coming in\u00a0and was able to lock focus it was already dragging its feet slightly in order\u00a0to slow down\u00a0so it could hit its chosen landing spot.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\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

\u00a0Still mostly gliding but with the feet raised again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\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

\u00a0I like the flattened flight posture here even though the horizontal wing position doesn’t present much surface area for the viewer to see.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\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

\u00a0In this image I enjoy the head and neck poking out from the curved wing canopy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\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

The heron is now becoming serious about landing as it begins to draw its legs and feet forward.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\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

\u00a0It flares its wings…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

and prepares to plant its feet in the shallow water.\u00a0\u00a0 As I said in yesterday’s post I’m often interested in\u00a0(obsessed by?) the “little things” and I did notice that the small, white\u00a0floating feather in the water in this image and the previous one gives an indication of how far the bird has traveled from one frame (and pose)\u00a0to the next.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\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

Entry. \u00a0This pose made me smile.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\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

\u00a0Apparently the bird still had a little too much momentum as its feet entered the mud…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\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

\u00a0so it needed…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\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

\u00a0one more wing flap to stick the landing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\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

\u00a0It held this position for a moment…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\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

and then began to fold its wings back.\u00a0 If I remember correctly it was at this point that my buffer filled up so this was the last shot I got of the landing and recovery process.<\/p>\n

I’ve said many times before that luck plays a significant role in bird photography and this series is no exception.\u00a0 This pond and the air above it were loaded with birds (what a nice change!)\u00a0and it’s only by chance that there were no background bird blobs in any of the shots to ruin the image.\u00a0 There was a gull wing in the upper\u00a0left hand\u00a0area of the frame in this last image but I was able to crop it out without cloning.<\/p>\n

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

Yesterday morning I decided to break with one of my long-standing traditions and brave the potential crowds by visiting one of the more popular birding sites in the area on a weekend – Glover Pond near Farmington Bay WMA. One of my goals was to locate and photograph the Little Blue Heron that has been hanging around in the area for the last couple of weeks. That bird is causing a lot of excitement in the birding and photography communities because it’s so far out of its range. I never did find that heron but this one more than made up for it.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25566,"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":[334,1094],"tags":[1095,1008,146,877,712,579],"class_list":["post-25553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-great-blue-herons","tag-ardea-herodias","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-flight","tag-glover-pond","tag-great-blue-heron","tag-landing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/great-blue-heron-7468-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6E9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25553","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=25553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}