{"id":5136,"date":"2012-04-17T11:28:47","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T17:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=5136"},"modified":"2012-04-17T17:43:19","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T23:43:19","slug":"fighting-curlews-and-this-photographers-rookie-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/17\/fighting-curlews-and-this-photographers-rookie-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting Curlews And This Photographer’s Rookie Mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally I’ll make a post that illustrates a mistake I’ve made as a photographer in the hope that it will help me to learn from my\u00a0error and possibly even enlighten some of my\u00a0viewers who\u00a0may be bird\u00a0photographers.\u00a0 Well,\u00a0last week I made a doozy of a mistake!<\/p>\n

I had been photographing a pair of Long-billed Curlews on\u00a0Antelope Island and as per usual for me I was using my 500 f\/4 with attached 1.4 tc, which when combined with the crop factor of my Canon 7D\u00a0gives me an effective focal length of 1120mm.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Suddenly\u00a0a second male\u00a0unexpectedly flew in to challenge the original male and immediately all hell broke loose.\u00a0 The action was incredibly quick with wings, legs, long bills and tails flailing in every direction and it turns out that I was simply too close to the birds with my lens and tc combination to prevent clipping body parts in most of my images of the fight.\u00a0 I remember thinking I should take off\u00a0the tc but I was afraid that by the time I had done so the action would be over.\u00a0 That was a mistake – the\u00a0altercation lasted for several minutes and I had plenty of time to switch.<\/p>\n

I decided to post some of the series anyway because the tightness on the birds gives an intimate look at some of the details of the squabble but I’ll be the first to admit that I’d trade those details in a heartbeat\u00a0for having not clipped and cut off\u00a0body parts.<\/p>\n

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\"long-billed-curlews-1511\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There were no preliminaries.\u00a0 The battle began immediately after the second male touched down.<\/p>\n

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\"long-billed-curlews-1513\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They used their incredibly long bills for both biting and stabbing.<\/p>\n

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\"long-billed-curlews-1518\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They would break apart for an instant, seeming to be sizing each other up…<\/p>\n

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\"long-billed-curlew-1525\"<\/a><\/p>\n

and then almost immediately go at it again.<\/p>\n

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\"long-billed-curlews-1528\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s my working theory that many fighting birds, particularly wading and shorebirds with long bills, instinctively go for the eye of the opponent in a fight.\u00a0 This one missed this time but it was close…<\/p>\n

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\"long-billed-curlews-1529\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Wings were also used as weapons and wing slaps were sometimes effective in knocking the other bird off its feet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"long-billed-curlews-1530\"<\/a><\/p>\n

En Garde!<\/p>\n

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\"long-billed-curlews-1531\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For a second or two they stood like this in threatening poses…<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"long-billed-curlews-1564\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then they moved a few feet to a more grassy fighting arena but eventually the bird on the left threw in the towel and flew off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"long-billed-curlew-1597\"<\/a><\/p>\n

However this bird paid a price.\u00a0 Its eye\u00a0had\u00a0apparently been\u00a0injured during the tussle and as soon as the vanquished bird left\u00a0the area\u00a0this curlew\u00a0immediately perched on\u00a0a buffalo chip for several minutes, keeping its right eye closed most of the time it was there.\u00a0 Eventually it wandered off and by then the eye seemed to have partially recovered.<\/p>\n

The next time a situation like this arises I’m sure I’ll remember to take off the tc.\u00a0 It’ll be my luck though that by the time I get it switched out the action will be over – one of the chances you take as a bird photographer…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

***Note<\/strong>:\u00a0 All photos taken at ISO 500 with shutter speeds between 1\/1600 and 1\/3200 and an f stop of either 6.3 or 7.1.\u00a0 Images globally sharpened – didn’t have time for masking the birds this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Occasionally I’ll make a post that illustrates a mistake I’ve made as a photographer in the hope that it will help me to learn from my\u00a0error and possibly even enlighten some of my\u00a0viewers who\u00a0may be bird\u00a0photographers.\u00a0 Well,\u00a0last week I made a doozy of a mistake! I had been photographing a pair of Long-billed Curlews on\u00a0Antelope Island and as per usual for me I was using my 500 f\/4 with attached 1.4 tc, which when combined with the crop factor of my Canon 7D\u00a0gives me an effective focal length of 1120mm.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Suddenly\u00a0a second male\u00a0unexpectedly flew in to challenge the original male and immediately all hell broke loose.\u00a0 The action was incredibly quick with wings, legs, long bills and tails flailing in every direction and it turns out that I was simply too close to the birds with my lens and tc combination to prevent clipping body parts in most of my images of the fight.\u00a0 I remember thinking I should take off\u00a0the tc but I was afraid that by the time I had done so the action would be over.\u00a0 That was a mistake – the\u00a0altercation lasted for several minutes and I had plenty of time to switch. I decided to post some of the series anyway because the tightness on the birds gives an intimate look at some of the details of the squabble but I’ll be the first to admit that I’d trade those details in a heartbeat\u00a0for having not clipped and cut off\u00a0body parts.   There were no preliminaries.\u00a0 The battle began immediately after…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,334,394,369],"tags":[31,693,68,140,692,208,427,311],"class_list":["post-5136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-long-billed-curlews","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-buffalo-chip","tag-canon-7d","tag-fighting","tag-focal-length","tag-long-billed-curlew","tag-numenius-americanus","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-1kQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5136","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=5136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}