1\/640, f\/9, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM @ 271mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nThis shot was taken on the same morning and from the same vantage point so you can see the\u00a0Promontory\u00a0Mountains\u00a0that were\u00a0deeply shaded in the previous photos and there’s a sliver of the refuge ponds and wetlands at bottom. I wish we could see a little more of them down there but it wasn’t to\u00a0be because I lost some of it when I had to rotate the image to make it level.<\/p>\n
So why was I reluctant to post this photo? Because I cheated and cloned out portions of two\u00a0swans at the frame edges. I’m not sure what I dislike more – cutting birds in half or cloning. I guess it’s a tossup.<\/p>\n
In my experience there are two huge difficulties with photographing groups of birds in relatively tight flocks – cutting off portions of birds at the frame edges and having birds partially or mostly\u00a0hidden by other birds.<\/p>\n
At least this time the latter problem was relatively minor.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Geology note:<\/em><\/p>\n In the last photo we can see at least 3 horizontal “benches” left behind by shoreline erosion of\u00a0old Lake Bonneville. The highest and most prominent\u00a0bench (at about wingtip level of the leading swan) is called the Bonneville Bench and marks the deepest level of the lake. At that time the lake was huge, covering much of Utah and parts of Idaho and Nevada. It covered over\u00a020,000 square miles and was about 980 feet deep.<\/em><\/p>\nThen 14,500 years ago the lake level fell catastrophically when it overflowed at Red Rock Pass, Idaho and washed away a natural dam. The level of the huge lake fell 344 feet in about a year to its next lowest level, the Provo Level, that we see bisecting the body of the leading swan. The flood was catastrophic and there’s still geological\u00a0evidence of it in the Snake and Columbia River drainages. Scientists estimate in just the first\u00a0few weeks it released 1000 cubic miles of water into the Snake River drainage..<\/em><\/p>\nUtah’s geological history is nothing short of spectacular.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some folks don’t get very excited about Tundra Swans. I do, they’re damned impressive and elegant creatures.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66246,"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":[338,334,8,1912],"tags":[49,4349,1914,146,4351,194,4348,4350,1913,311,4347],"class_list":["post-66243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-tundra-swans","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-bonneville-bench","tag-cyanus-columbianus","tag-flight","tag-geology","tag-lake-bonneville","tag-meriwether-lewis","tag-provo-level","tag-tundra-swan","tag-utah-2","tag-whistling-swan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/tundra-swan-1928-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-her","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66243","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=66243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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