{"id":95569,"date":"2021-03-02T05:04:38","date_gmt":"2021-03-02T12:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=95569"},"modified":"2021-03-02T05:39:20","modified_gmt":"2021-03-02T12:39:20","slug":"sandhill-cranes-dancing-at-bear-river-mbr-yesterday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/02\/sandhill-cranes-dancing-at-bear-river-mbr-yesterday\/","title":{"rendered":"Sandhill Cranes Dancing At Bear River MBR Yesterday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning on my way to Bear River MBR I mused out loud about visiting another area in Utah where I’ve had interesting experiences with Sandhill Cranes, even though I thought it was likely too early to have a good chance of seeing them now.<\/p>\n

But I was in for a delightful surprise.<\/p>\n

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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>\n

There were three of them in this group (I saw others later) that were already dancing by the time I got my pickup stopped and my lens on them. Based on size and behavior I believe two were males and the third one was female but with Sandhill Cranes you can seldom be sure beyond any doubt (both sexes display and males aren’t always larger).<\/p>\n

Eight courtship displays are recognized in Sandhill Cranes, two of which are part of a sequence collectively referred to as “Dancing” – the “Bow” and the “Vertical Leap”. In this first shot we see one of the presumed males in midair during a leap.<\/p>\n

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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>\n

The next two photos in the burst caught him…<\/p>\n

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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>\n

returning to terra firma.<\/p>\n

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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>\n

Only seconds later one of the males was at it again.<\/p>\n

At first I was disappointed I wasn’t a little closer to them but with three huge cranes in my viewfinder and one or more of them jumping vertically…<\/p>\n

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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>\n

I’d almost certainly have clipped or cut off body parts more often than I did, especially knowing my unenviable track record in similar situations.<\/p>\n

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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>\n

When he landed he had his head turned away from me in the photo after this one because he and the presumed female in front immediately and aggressively went after the other male on the left. That second male made his escape further to our left but that bird continued to display so the first male…<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, 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>\n

aggressively pursued him to make his point.<\/p>\n

I got quite a few more photos of them dancing but with that many birds behaving so erratically I got lots of butt shots with heads turned away so I’m not including any of them here.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, for reasons alluded to earlier in this post, I expected to have far better luck with Tundra Swans than with Sandhill Cranes but the opposite turned out to be true. There are still many swans on the refuge and a few were reasonably close but that early in the morning they were always at a poor light angle so I didn’t get any swan photos I’m particularly proud of. .<\/p>\n

But I’m still a happy photographer because I consider these photos of dancing cranes to be more than just a consolation prize.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning on my way to Bear River MBR I mused out loud about visiting another area in Utah where I’ve had interesting experiences with Sandhill Cranes, even though I thought it was likely too early to have a good chance of seeing them now. But I was in for a delightful surprise.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95570,"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":[338,334,391,1128],"tags":[5543,49,734,1839,743,5642,5544],"class_list":["post-95569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-sandhill-cranes","tag-antigone-canadensis","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-dancing","tag-displaying","tag-sandhill-crane","tag-tundra-swans","tag-vertical-leap"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/sandhill-crane-1280-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-oRr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95569","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=95569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}