![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/sandhill-cranee-9636b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"sandhill-crane-9636b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n1\/100, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nTheir approach was slow and he continued to call to her the entire time. I love the comparison between her typical flight posture and his exaggerated pose with\u00a0his arched body and raised head and neck as he directs his calls toward his mate.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/sandhill-crane-9640b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"sandhill-crane-9640b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
1\/1000, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nAs they descended and approached their destination he\u00a0seemed to be deliberately keeping his body between his mate and the ground\u00a0as if he was trying to direct her to a specific landing spot that pleased him (though of course I don’t know that for fact).<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/sandhill-crane-9655b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"sandhill-crane-9655b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
1\/2000, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nAs they got even closer I could only keep one of the two birds in frame and\u00a0I can’t remember if this one was the male or the female (based on a comment below from Sallie Reynolds I’m now convinced that this is the female). Here the crane tipped its body toward the rising sun in the east and provided good light and detail on its ventral side which minimized all those dark shadows we see in the previous images.<\/p>\n
I wish I knew precisely what he was trying to communicate to her during their approach but I did have the distinct impression that he was guiding her to a specific landing spot and perhaps even giving her\u00a0guidance about how she should conduct herself on the ground amongst all those\u00a0potentially competing males.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
R.I.P. Stephen Hawking.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And he was quite insistent about whatever he was trying to tell her (I have my suspicions about what it was). <\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57278,"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":[334,391,1128],"tags":[137,146,1129,211,1539,743,2872],"class_list":["post-57269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-sandhill-cranes","tag-female","tag-flight","tag-grus-canadensis","tag-male","tag-mated-pair","tag-sandhill-crane","tag-wayne-county-utah"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/sandhill-crane-9633b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-eTH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57269","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=57269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/sandhill-crane-9624b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"sandhill-crane-9624b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/sandhill-crane-9633b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"sandhill-crane-9633b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n