Google Image Search on “sage grouse”<\/a><\/span><\/span>. Of the first 100 photos that appeared 89 of them were of grouse on a lek and the vast majority of them were displaying males (a couple of the photos were difficult to categorize but I tried to assign them as accurately as possible.)<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n
If you know the location of a lek and you’re willing to get up in the middle of the night to arrive on location in complete darkness and then suffer miserable cold for several hours while you’re photographing them (usually in your vehicle with your windows down and the engine and heater off) you’ll often be rewarded with oodles of high quality photos of displaying males.<\/p>\n
Most bird photographers I know would gladly suffer those indignities in order to get photos like that, including me. And I have, multiple times. I have so many quality photos similar to the one above that most of them will never see the light of day, even though I like them a lot.<\/p>\n
Too much of a good thing?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/sage-grouse-2401-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"sage-grouse-2401-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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>\nBut nowadays I value photos like this one much more than I used to – a chance encounter with a male Sage Grouse in his typical habitat, not displaying and nowhere near an active lek. In my experience these types of encounters are rare.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/sage-grouse-2447-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"sage-grouse-2447-ron-dudley\\"")
\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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>\nEven when Sage Grouse are known to be in the area they’re so incredibly cryptic they can be impossible to spot. When they’re not on a lek they tend to be extremely shy and their instinct is to hunker down in the presence of a potential threat like a vehicle or a humanoid on foot pointing a long lens their way.<\/p>\n
With these two grouse I experimented with selective focusing…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/sage-grouse-2449-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"sage-grouse-2449-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n
to interesting effect I think.<\/p>\n
Can you imagine how hard it would be to even know these birds were there? If you look away for a second they can be impossible to relocate even when you know exactly where they are.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/sage-grouse-5718-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"sage-grouse-5718-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
1\/1250, f\/9, ISO 500, 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>\nDon’t get me wrong. I love my photos of males displaying on a lek. In past years I’d have placed much less value on photos like this one.<\/p>\n
But not any more. As I’ve said in the past, for me degree of difficulty matters<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My tastes in photos of Sage Grouse have changed dramatically.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84421,"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":[334,1558],"tags":[2180,5074,5076,5073,1598,5075,311,1909],"class_list":["post-84417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-greater-sage-grouse","tag-centrocercus-urophasianus","tag-ctyptic","tag-displaying-on-a-lek","tag-in-sagebrush-habitat","tag-sage-grouse","tag-selective-focusing","tag-utah-2","tag-wayne-county"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/sage-grouse-4289-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-lXz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84417","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=84417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/sage-grouse-4289-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"sage-grouse-4289-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n