{"id":34629,"date":"2015-10-13T06:10:02","date_gmt":"2015-10-13T12:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=34629"},"modified":"2015-10-13T06:10:02","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T12:10:02","slug":"sage-grouse-performing-and-fighting-on-a-lek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/13\/sage-grouse-performing-and-fighting-on-a-lek\/","title":{"rendered":"Sage Grouse Performing And Fighting On A Lek"},"content":{"rendered":"

This experience with\u00a0Greater Sage Grouse was one of my most memorable in the field.<\/p>\n

I’ve posted images of some of these birds previously but all of these are new to my blog.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

1\/400, f\/6.3, ISO 3200, Canon 7D, Canon<\/strong> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This past May I was near a lek in very early morning on Utah’s Aquarius Plateau. It was long before sunrise when I first arrived so I was really testing the ISO performance of my relatively new Canon 7D Mark II and in the end I thought it significantly outperformed my previous 7D. It was still quite dark when these first two images were taken.<\/p>\n

Here a male is strutting for three females in the background.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/400, f\/6.3, ISO 3200, Canon 7D, Canon<\/strong> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In this image I like the strategic placement of the head of one of the females as she watches the performance intensely.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/800, f\/6.3, ISO 2000, Canon 7D, Canon<\/strong> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Finally, some of the light from the rising sun began to light the scene as the males continued to dance. The diffuse brightness in the\u00a0eastern sky caused the catch lights in the eyes of the male to look a little eerie.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 4000, Canon 7D, Canon<\/strong> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Occasionally two of the males would square off as a prelude to combat and it was a real challenge to come even close to freezing the action in this light. Their weapon of choice was their wings and the wing-slapping was usually too fast to freeze, even at these very high ISO’s. They also did a lot of biting and claw-scratching.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 4000, Canon 7D, Canon<\/strong> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Eventually there was enough light to get those furiously flapping wings\u00a0fairly sharp.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 4000, Canon 7D, Canon<\/strong> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The bird on the left seemed to be the less skilled fighter and bore the brunt of the blows. Here he is recoiling from one of the slaps.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 4000, Canon 7D, Canon<\/strong> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

That bird seemed to have its eyes closed much of the time, either in response to, or in anticipation of, another wing-strike from its rival.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 4000, Canon 7D, Canon<\/strong> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The fighting bouts were intense but they spent most of their time squared off in threatening poses like this, similar to two prize fighters at the weigh-in prior to a boxing match. I almost expected Don King to appear between the two birds…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/6.3, ISO 1600, Canon 7D, Canon<\/strong> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But both birds eventually returned to their own display ground and began to perform for the females once again.<\/p>\n

The grouse stayed on the lek for about another 40 minutes after this shot was taken and then slowly dispersed, usually in small groups. Some of them flew off and others just slowly wandered away.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

This experience with Greater Sage Grouse was one of my most memorable in the field.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34636,"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":[334,394,1558],"tags":[2519,2348,1560,140,2031,187,2183,311],"class_list":["post-34629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-greater-sage-grouse","tag-aquarius-plateau","tag-canon-7d-mark-ii","tag-centrocercus-uophasianus","tag-fighting","tag-greater-sage-grouse-3","tag-iso","tag-lek","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/sage-grouse-3706-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-90x","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34629","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=34629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}