1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,\u00a0Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nIronically I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about photographing this avocet at Bear River MBR because at some body angles it was partially sidelit and I didn’t think I’d be fond of some of the vegetation sticking up out of the water. But I had two avocets to choose from and in a series of photos similar to this one I think I got lucky.<\/p>\n
For my tastes the bird is placed just about perfectly in the frame with a clean background behind the avocet and emergent vegetation on the right. I love that distinctively rusty head and neck in good light with the darker background to set it off. The body angle was just right to put warm early morning light on the entire bird which was particularly important with that almost black bill against the dark background.<\/p>\n
And the biologist in me adores something else in the photo that may be an off-putter for some viewers – the midge in flight at lower right. This time of year the air at the refuge is literally swarming with midges, to the point that I was lucky to get only one of them that is easily seen in the frame. I think more of them would have been distracting. Midges as a food source are one of the primary attractions for birds at the refuge so I appreciate the natural implications of that little “bug” in the photo.<\/p>\n
That’s not to say I think the image is perfect (in my opinion “perfect” photos are nonexistent or nearly so). I wish I had just a sliver of more room at the top of the frame for composition purposes and this kind of shot is always a cropping conundrum for me at bottom. I generally prefer to leave enough room down there to include the “virtual feet” that we can’t really see in the water but the more of the reflection you include the more the reflection looks cut off. In this case this was all the room I had down there so the decision was made for me by the size of the original frame.<\/p>\n
There are only four species of avocets in the world and American Avocets are the only one with distinctive breeding and non-breeding plumages. During breeding season their normally grayish-white head and neck becomes this striking cinnamon color and I love it. Late in the summer and early fall when they’re still here but they’ve lost that beautiful color I tend to point my lens their way much less often (which probably isn’t flattering to me as a biologist or as a bird photographer). Here in the Americas we’re lucky to have them because other than a few of the species that occasionally show up in Greenland as casuals or accidentals they’re found nowhere else.<\/p>\n
The name avocet comes from the Italian “avosetta” which means “graceful bird”. In my opinion it’s perfect, including when I see them in flight.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
PS – Sheesh, that’s a lot to read about one simple photo. Sorry, I guess I got carried away.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As simple as it is this photo from two days ago may become one of my favorite shots of an American Avocet for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71231,"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":[437,338,6,334,8],"tags":[27,49,564,916,1980,2075,471],"class_list":["post-71229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-avocets-shore-birds","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","tag-american-avocet","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-breeding-plumage","tag-composition","tag-midges","tag-range","tag-recurvirostra-americana"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/american-avocet-1322-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-iwR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71229","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=71229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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