![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/ring-necked-pheasant-6140-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"ring-necked-pheasant-6140-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nPlus some light at the end of the tunnel for this anxious bird photographer.<\/p>\n
Yesterday morning, despite being limited to my much smaller lens while my primary birding lens is in the shop for repair, I took a chance and made a long trip to a fairly remote area of Utah in a quest for cooperative birds.<\/p>\n
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1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM + 1.4 tc at 299mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n This male Ring-necked Pheasant was as close as I came to success. I found him perched on a rustic old fence soon after sunrise. Most of the time he was in the shadow of the tall corner fence post at right but during this particular crowing display I got reasonably good light on all of him except for his left wing and the hidden portion of his tail.<\/p>\n To me a rustic setting like this seems perfectly appropriate for a Ring-necked Pheasant. I like the way he’s framed by the post and rail and the warm light on the bird and most of the background. Some viewers won’t appreciate the barbed wire but like it or not that stuff has become an integral part of the rural landscape. Without the wire there wouldn’t be fence posts and rails that a wide range of birds rely on as elevated perches so I’ve learned to become at least a little more tolerant of the wire itself.<\/p>\n That said, next time I come across another critter hung up in the “devil wire” my acceptance of it is likely to take another big hit.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM + 1.4 tc at 299mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n He looks so beat up from molt I’m not sure what he had to crow about but he must have thought he was a pretty dandy-looking bird because he displayed like this four different times while crowing and flapping his wings. With so many wing feathers missing and still growing in I have to wonder if he could even fly. When he left the fence rail he just hopped down into the grasses and eventually disappeared.<\/p>\n I thought my ‘back-up’ lens performed more than acceptably well in this situation, especially with the teleconverter attached. I don’t expect the image quality from that combination that I get from my 500mm f\/4 prime lens when it’s working properly so in this instance I was more than pleased.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lens Repair Update:<\/em><\/p>\n After some serious and damn-near unforgiveable missteps Canon has pledged that my repaired 500mm prime lens will be back in my grubby little hands no later than Monday or Tuesday of next week. Many of my readers are photographers and all of us need gear repair at some time or another so it’s my intention to report on the saga of my lens repair in more detail sometime soon. The story has pronounced highs and lows and it isn’t over yet.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Plus some light at the end of the tunnel for this anxious bird photographer.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/ring-necked-pheasant-6144-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"ring-necked-pheasant-6144-ron-dudley\\"")
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