{"id":41538,"date":"2016-08-18T06:14:39","date_gmt":"2016-08-18T12:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=41538"},"modified":"2016-08-18T18:54:29","modified_gmt":"2016-08-19T00:54:29","slug":"this-is-why-i-hate-low-flying-aircraft-in-the-marshes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/18\/this-is-why-i-hate-low-flying-aircraft-in-the-marshes\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is Why I Hate Low-flying Aircraft In The Marshes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning a bazillion birds and I had an extremely\u00a0rude awakening.<\/p>\n

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\"long-billed<\/p>\n

It started out peaceful and delightful. This was the scene as I was watching and enjoying incredible numbers of birds including\u00a0egrets, herons, avocets, pelicans,\u00a0ibis, terns, ducks, coots\u00a0and geese at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. But the majority of the birds in front of me were Long-billed\u00a0Dowitchers – there were countless numbers of them. The dowitchers you see here in the middle distance only represent a very small percentage of\u00a0those that were close to me. I hesitate to\u00a0guess at the numbers but the dowitchers alone were a very<\/em> impressive sight.<\/p>\n

The Great Salt Lake and its environs\u00a0is one of the major rest stops for dowitchers as they migrate south from their tundra breeding grounds in extreme northern Alaska and Canada to their wintering grounds, mostly in Mexico.<\/p>\n

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\"long-billed1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

And resting they were. In fact most were sleeping with their long bulls tucked under their wings. To be perfectly honest I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about photographing large clusters of birds like this but I popped off a couple of shots of them without changing my settings meant for other purposes. To me this\u00a0photo\u00a0almost looks like its been processed with some kind of weird “artistic”\u00a0filter but all I did was crop and sharpen the image. Upon closer inspection I actually kind of like it for its depth of field gradient and the lone, contrasting avocet at left.<\/p>\n

But this peaceful scene changed dramatically at 8:24 am when…<\/p>\n

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\"cessna<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/strong><\/p>\n

this Cessna aircraft approached from the northwest. It was coming in almost directly at me at a very low altitude – as you can see from the image its flight path and angle as it approached were almost level with me, indicating that it was very low.<\/p>\n

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\"cessna<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/strong><\/p>\n

As it passed overhead I estimated it was only about 100′ off the deck (maybe it was slightly more. I can’t be sure but it was very low). This image is full frame (uncropped) and was taken just before it passed slightly to my left.<\/p>\n

You can imagine its effect on the serene and peaceful scene below – it was…<\/p>\n

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\"long-billed<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

pure pandemonium – you can only imagine the sound!<\/p>\n

Many thousands of\u00a0birds,\u00a0including these dowitchers, lifted off in a panic with nowhere safe to go. After the plane passed\u00a0the dowitchers\u00a0soon\u00a0landed in the water where they were before but it took several minutes before they settled down again.\u00a0Many other birds\u00a0left the area entirely and for some minutes afterward waves of birds passed overhead from behind me – birds that had obviously been scared up by the plane after it passed me.<\/p>\n

These dowitchers (other migratory species too) are here to rest and recuperate during their strenuous migration of many thousands of miles and the last thing they need is added stress and wasted energy while they’re here.<\/p>\n

My initial\u00a0assumption\u00a0had been that the pilot was just some joy-riding jerk getting his kicks out of harassing birds (and bird lovers, there\u00a0were two other\u00a0vehicles\u00a0behind me whose occupants were enjoying these birds). But when I got home I looked up the tail numbers of the plane on the FAA Registry<\/a> and discovered that it’s owned by the State of Utah. So perhaps these were state employees on some kind of official mission but if that’s the case\u00a0I simply don’t understand why they had to fly so low and stress the birds as much as they did. Migrating birds are often counted from aircraft but even if that’s what\u00a0they were doing it seems counterproductive (in more ways than one) to be flying anywhere near this low directly over so many birds.<\/p>\n

If anyone can think of a good reason why state employees would be flying this low over so many birds on a Federal Wildlife Refuge\u00a0I’d love to hear it.<\/p>\n

I’m at a loss…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n