{"id":28938,"date":"2015-01-13T07:22:01","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T14:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=28938"},"modified":"2015-01-13T07:22:01","modified_gmt":"2015-01-13T14:22:01","slug":"preening-trumpeter-swans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/13\/preening-trumpeter-swans\/","title":{"rendered":"Preening Trumpeter Swans"},"content":{"rendered":"

I believe the Trumpeter Swan to be the most elegant bird species I’ve ever photographed.<\/p>\n

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\"trumpeter<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/9, ISO 400, Canon 7D, Canon 100-400 @400mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This past September I spent about 20 minutes up close with a (apparently) mated pair of these huge, shy birds as they preened on southwest Montana’s Elk Lake. This was the first time I’ve ever been anywhere near this close to Trumpeter Swans and they were very accepting of me.\u00a0They\u00a0were several feet from each other and they both had their backs to me as they preened. With the dark blue background and the bright white birds the scene was an exposure nightmare and I’ve dealt with that as best I can during processing.<\/p>\n

This is the larger (up to 30 lbs) male working over some of those beautiful feathers.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"trumpeter<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/10, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike many other species that\u00a0long neck makes it relatively easy for them to reach almost any part of their body during maintenance.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"trumpeter<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/10, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0The smaller female joined in the preening party too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"trumpeter<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/10, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0That long, flexible neck formed an almost infinite number of shapes as each bird worked over its feathers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"trumpeter<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1250, f\/10, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Getting access to some of the feathers often required each bird to maneuver a wing into an interesting position.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"trumpeter<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/10, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Feathers were pulled loose several times…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"trumpeter<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/9, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

and here you can see this one floating away on the dark blue water.<\/p>\n

Several things struck me about the uniqueness of these birds as I watched them through my lens but one of them stands out – compared to other birds they move very slowly and I believe that contributes\u00a0to our perception of\u00a0their elegance. Generally, the smaller the bird the more “twitchy” their movements and these huge swans move slowly and gracefully rather than in quick, jerky movements like smaller species. Even their rousing and wing flapping are\u00a0performed in what seems like slow motion.<\/p>\n

I’m sure that my\u00a0time with these wild and\u00a0beautiful swans will remain etched in my memory for as long as I live.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

I believe the Trumpeter Swan to be the most elegant bird species I’ve ever photographed.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28941,"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":[334,395,1493,360,1587],"tags":[555,2226,2228,137,211,220,255,263,1588],"class_list":["post-28938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","category-trumpeter-swans","tag-centennial-valley","tag-cygnus-buccinator","tag-elk-lake","tag-female","tag-male","tag-montana-2","tag-preening","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-trumpeter-swan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/trumpeter-swan-5911-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7wK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28938","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=28938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}