{"id":28565,"date":"2014-12-26T06:08:51","date_gmt":"2014-12-26T13:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=28565"},"modified":"2014-12-26T06:08:51","modified_gmt":"2014-12-26T13:08:51","slug":"birds-in-a-christmas-morning-snowstorm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/26\/birds-in-a-christmas-morning-snowstorm\/","title":{"rendered":"Birds In A Christmas Morning Snowstorm"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been my Christmas tradition for years to spend part of the morning photographing birds.\u00a0 I usually have the place (wherever it might be) mostly to myself and personally I find communing with nature on Christmas morning to be quite appropriate and fulfilling.\u00a0 And yesterday’s snowstorm was pure delight.<\/p>\n

That said, conditions were far from ideal for photography at Farmington Bay.\u00a0 I was out there early and the light was very low\u00a0during the storm\u00a0which meant shooting at high ISO’s, few catch lights in the eyes of my subjects, less detail\u00a0and muted colors.\u00a0 But as usual the snow and cold made for some interesting settings and caused many of the birds to be “stickier”.<\/p>\n

All of these images except for the last one are presented in the order they were taken so you can see the progression of the storm.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 2500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon \u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0At first it was only slightly foggy and relatively dark but it hadn’t yet begun to snow in earnest.\u00a0 This Great Blue Heron looked a little nonplussed by the snow that had already fallen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 2500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon \u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Normally I can never get close to a kingfisher but the snow and cold made this male a little less skittish.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 2500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon \u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Eventually he flew to another nearby perch and posed for me again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"northern<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon \u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Northern Harriers seemed to revel in the snow and moderate wind.\u00a0 By now you can see that it was snowing fairly heavily.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"northern<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon \u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0The harriers actually seemed to be having fun in those conditions.\u00a0 At one time there were five of them playing aerial tag with each other at the same time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"northern<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1250, f\/6.3, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon \u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Once there’s snow on the ground the harriers tend to hunt closer to the road and quickly become acclimated to traffic which gives better opportunities for the photographer.\u00a0 At this point the falling snow was thick enough that even at this close range there were quite a few snowflakes between me and the bird (including one right in front of its eyes).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 2000, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon \u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This male kestrel often perches on the bat box at the “owl bridge”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon \u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This beautiful rufous Red-tailed Hawk has been hanging out at Farmington for months now and though yesterday morning\u00a0it didn’t allow me\u00a0a close approach\u00a0I thought this shot gave a good indication of the intensity of the storm.\u00a0 Eventually a harrier came by and flushed the hawk from its perch and to my surprise…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon \u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

it flew right in front of my pickup.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"hunter<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon \u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Even some of the generally well-prepared duck hunters were struggling in the storm.\u00a0 Some hunters use bicycles to pull wagons or sleds loaded with their gear as a method of accessing more remote areas of the refuge.\u00a0 When this hunter was returning to his vehicle the snow was now thick enough that the bike he had ridden going in had to be pushed coming back.\u00a0 I’ll bet he was exhausted after pushing and pulling that load so far through the snow.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I think duck hunters are nearly as crazy as bird photographers…<\/p>\n

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

It’s been my Christmas tradition for years to spend part of the morning photographing birds. I usually have the place (wherever it might be) mostly to myself and personally I find communing with nature on Christmas morning to be quite appropriate and fulfilling. And yesterday’s snowstorm was pure delight.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28568,"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":[340,334,1094,341,450],"tags":[28,2329,2357,397,712,958,234,451,286,2356],"class_list":["post-28565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-birds","category-great-blue-herons","category-northern-harriers","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-american-kestrel","tag-belted-kingfisher","tag-duck-hunter","tag-farmington-bay","tag-great-blue-heron","tag-high-iso","tag-northern-harrier","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-snow","tag-snowstorm"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/belted-kingfisher-7735-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7qJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28565","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=28565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}