![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/canada-goose-5268-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"canada-goose-5268-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nI like the dynamic flight posture that resulted from the speed, wing position and relatively steep flight angle of the goose in both of these images.<\/p>\n
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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n These shots were taken at a local pond three days ago as the goose was coming in to land on the water. When geese are approaching this pond they typically come in at a pretty steep angle and then flare to slow down and reduce their\u00a0rate of descent\u00a0just prior to landing. Usually they’re gliding (not flapping)\u00a0at these later stages of their\u00a0approach and they don’t have their wings\u00a0fully extended\u00a0so it takes high speed to keep a 10 pound goose airborne.<\/p>\n And\u00a0the high speed, downward flight\u00a0path and gliding flight\u00a0produced a couple of images I quite like for the flight posture of the bird.<\/p>\n The fairly bright willow tree branches in the background may or may not be a distraction for some\u00a0viewers but they don’t pull my own eye away from the bird, at least not significantly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Even though the next shot in the burst has the goose in exactly the same posture I’m including it because it provides evidence that the bird was gliding since the wings are in the same position in both images.<\/p>\n But the\u00a0background changes, providing at least some relief from the monotony of\u00a0two otherwise almost identical images… \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n I looked for differences in the bird in the two photos but found very few and they were minor. One thing I noticed was that the\u00a0body of the goose is slightly more level in the second image than in the first (as evidenced by the junction of the front of both wings with the body). That’s because the bird was leveling out as it approached the water just below. You definitely want to be\u00a0level horizontally when you hit the water. And going at the “right” speed.<\/p>\n Twice now on different days on the pond as I’ve been photographing heavy-bodied\u00a0geese coming in to land on the water I’ve thought of Captain Sully Sullenberger’s “Miracle on the Hudson”. Both Sully and this goose faced some of the same critical decisions if they were going to avoid disaster, including\u00a0rate of descent,\u00a0proper nose angle, when and how to reduce speed and others.<\/p>\n Even though we’ve all seen Sully’s miraculous landing on the Hudson\u00a0before I’m including this link to a video\u00a0from the Smithsonian<\/a> that includes the landing itself but also some background of\u00a0the event as evidence of how very impressive that almost impossible\u00a0successful landing was. For me it was worth another look, in part because\u00a0I found there to be striking similarities between the\u00a0approaches leading up to the landings of both the Airbus A320-214 and the goose.<\/p>\n It’s\u00a0ironic that the incident with Captain Sully Sullenberger’s flight 1549 was caused by bird strikes that completely disabled both engines because the species involved\u00a0was the Canada Goose.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/canada-goose-3269-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"canada-goose-5269-ron-dudley\\"")
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