1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 1000, 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 <\/p>\n
In an effort to cure my cabin fever during this extended period of cloudy weather we’re enduring I made a quick trip to Farmington Bay WMA two days ago to see if I could find some light and some birds. I found very few birds and almost no light. This is the only interesting shot I got where a bird in my viewfinder converged with decent light.<\/p>\n
But I’m glad to have it, in part because I have so few interesting photos of ravens. In some areas (National Parks for example) ravens have become so acclimated to humans you can almost pet them but elsewhere in the west they tend to be spooky and unapproachable to the extreme. They’re smart and they’ve been harassed and shot as vermin for so many generations they simply don’t trust us, for good reason. Typically they allow a vehicle to approach them fairly closely but if you begin to slow down they get very nervous and as soon as the vehicle rocks backward to a full stop they’re gone. Reliably so.<\/p>\n
Aiming a long lens at them has the same result – they’ve had too many rifles pointed their way for too many decades (magpies, their close relatives, tend to react the same way to long lenses for the same reason).<\/p>\n
I wasn’t particularly close to this raven and “he” was partially hidden by vegetation but when I began to stop my pickup he was instantly nervous anyway. As soon as I pointed my lens his way I fired a quick burst and this is only the second shot in the sequence. I wish we could see more of his legs but I’m pleased with the light angle that allowed good detail in those dense blacks and a catch light in the eye and I like the “wing-fling” takeoff posture. I also think his shadow on the ground adds something positive.<\/p>\n
I’ll close with an interesting tidbit about ravens. One of the collective nouns for a group of ravens is a “conspiracy” – presumably because their intelligence allows them to accomplish the devious deeds they’re well known for such as stealing food from closed containers.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A common species in both name and occurrence but around here at least ravens are uncommonly difficult to photograph well.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79899,"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":[334,1531,2782],"tags":[93,4885,96,1008,2738,311],"class_list":["post-79898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-common-ravens","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-common-raven","tag-conspiracy","tag-corvus-corax","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-takeoff","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/common-raven-0368-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-kMG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79898","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=79898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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