{"id":34255,"date":"2015-09-25T06:55:13","date_gmt":"2015-09-25T12:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=34255"},"modified":"2015-09-25T10:59:34","modified_gmt":"2015-09-25T16:59:34","slug":"snowy-egret-a-twisting-turning-takeoff-and-a-defense-of-common-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/25\/snowy-egret-a-twisting-turning-takeoff-and-a-defense-of-common-species\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowy Egret – A Twisting, Turning Takeoff (and a defense of “common species”)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suppose that my post this morning is my petulant way of responding to something I saw posted on Facebook last night that raised my hackles a bit. FB friend Donald Quintana posted an image of a Great Blue Heron as his way of\u00a0reacting\u00a0to the photo submission guidelines of a birding magazine that stated “Please, no more photos of Egrets or Great Blue Herons” (he didn’t\u00a0say which magazine it was). It was his way of admonishing himself for not photographing common species as often as he felt he\u00a0should.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0suspect the magazine said what they did because they get a high number of egret and heron images submitted and don’t\u00a0appreciate having to go through them all\u00a0– after all they’re relatively easy birds to photograph because they’re common, they’re large\u00a0and they\u00a0tend to be\u00a0fairly approachable. But to me that doesn’t seem like a defensible reason to discriminate. They’re beautiful, majestic birds and if you eliminate them from the mix, what’s next? Some species will always be at the top of the list and if you consistently whittle off the most common submissions you’ll eventually be left with nothing but the Ivory-billed Woodpecker…<\/p>\n

I\u00a0can’t help\u00a0but come\u00a0to the defense of common species.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"snowy1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 320, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I found this Snowy Egret three days ago at Glover Pond near Farmington Bay. At first I wasn’t too excited about photographing it because the light was a little harsh (especially for a bright white bird), the setting was busy and I was shooting through a narrow tunnel of grasses between me and the egret. To be perfectly honest the main reason I kept my lens trained on the bird was because, based on its behavior, it was about to cast a pellet and I thought I might get lucky with some behavioral shots (I’ve since learned that Snowy Egrets are “not known” to cast pellets).<\/p>\n

But when you’re photographing birds you never know what might happen and suddenly this egret…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"snowy1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 320, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

twisted and turned on its perch…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"snowy1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 320, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

and took off to my left which I didn’t expect. This might be my favorite shot of the series…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"snowy1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 320, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

although I also like the wing position, the\u00a0feather texture in the wings and the look at those “golden slippers” in this image.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"snowy1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 320, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I was able to get one more shot of the egret in flight before it turned away from me and was gone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Common species – gotta love’em.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

I suppose that my post this morning is my petulant way of responding to something I saw posted on Facebook last night that raised my hackles a bit.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34266,"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":[334,375],"tags":[2696,1695,1444,397,877,2695,2694,287],"class_list":["post-34255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-snowy-egrets","tag-casting-pellet","tag-common-bird-species","tag-egretta-thula","tag-farmington-bay","tag-glover-pond","tag-ivory-billed-woodpecker","tag-magazine-photo-submission-guidelines","tag-snowy-egret"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/snowy-egret-4382b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8Uv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34255","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=34255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}