![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/wild-turkey-5288-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"wild-turkey-5288-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n This is the photo I posted five days ag<\/span><\/span>o<\/a> of the rare smoke morph hen Wild Turkey I photographed the previous day in the mountains of the west desert. She only came out into the open once and the several photos I managed to get of her all looked about like this one.<\/p>\n The following day I journeyed out west again to see if I could relocate the flock and that unique hen. I managed to find both but once again the elusive hen only came out into the open for a brief moment so in my next post, the one featuring images of the displaying tom<\/span><\/span><\/a>, I told my blog readers I wasn’t able to get any photos of her. I thought that was true because there weren’t any photos of her on my memory card when I downloaded the images to my computer.<\/p>\n But yesterday I remembered I hadn’t downloaded any images from my other camera attached to my smaller 100-400 zoom lens for some time so I did so. And lo and behold, about a dozen photos of the smoke morph hen popped up on my screen that were taken on my second morning with the flock. I’d forgotten that when she came out into the open she was too close for my big lens so I had quickly switched over to my other camera with the smaller lens attached.<\/p>\n Brain fart indeed. I’m just lucky I didn’t reformat that card while it was still in my camera. I’ve pulled that stupid stunt more than once in the past.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @400mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n This is one of those photos taken with my smaller lens on my second morning with the flock. You get a strong hint that it was a grab shot (literally, I just grabbed my other camera setup off my pickup seat and fired away) because my camera settings weren’t particularly appropriate for the situation. At least I got the exposure right.<\/p>\n I think it complements the previous photo because we see several of her features better including her tail and the colors of her head. I was also closer to her and she’s in better light so this photo has a little more detail. Immediately after this shot was taken she completely disappeared into the deep shadows of the thick junipers in the background.<\/p>\n I’m delighted to have the photos I took on my second morning with this rare bird since she’s probably the only smoke morph Wild Turkey I’ll ever see, much less photograph. In comments to my previous post about this bird, both on my blog and on Facebook, only a single reader said that they’d ever seen a smoke morph Wild Turkey. That reader was my good friend Jim DeWitt, a.k.a. “Wickersham’s Conscience.”<\/p>\n Jim wrote a humorous blog post about his failed attempt to photograph a couple of smoke morph Wild Turkeys along the Appalachian Trail. It’s worth the read.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n