BIG BIRDS / swans, egrets, sandhill cranes
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This is a photograph of a male trumpeter swan photographed during a snowstorm in late March. He and his mate were migrating north when they chose to wait out the storm on our pond in Tottenham, Ontario.That morning, I was surprised to see a pair of swans mixed in with the usual collection of geese and ducks that hang out in our open water. I quickly layered up, donned my waders and headed out, hoping I could get into position without scaring away the newcomers.I snuck up the creek to the dam under our bridge and hunkered down to get an eye-level view of the birds as they cruised around the pond, feeding and resting. The bridge protected me from the snow but the water, of course, was ice cold and my waders had a slow leak. So I’d shoot until my boots filled with water, sneak back inside to dry out, warm up, recharge camera batteries, and then sneak back out for another session. This lasted until the storm cleared in the afternoon and they flew off. The female was tagged and we later learned that she was a three year old released in Stratford, Ontario and spent her summers on Wye Marsh just north of us. She’d also been spotted several times in other area lakes. It was a great day of shooting and I knew I’d captured some memorable images but I had no idea just how lucky I’d been; the combination of snowstorm, diffused lighting, and super-telephoto lens created a unique effect that looked more painterly than photographic, giving them an angelic appearance.
IMHO, the redwing blackbirds had no right to harass the trumpeters. The swans were just passing by the bird’s nest area on their way to their own nest when the irate parents began dive bombing them and landing on their tails. They never attacked the cygnets and the adults were certainly not in any real danger. It just seemed like a case of blackbird bullying.
Sooo cold. Fingers, toes, and face, numb. Where the Mississippi River runs through Monticello, Minnesota, the water stays open even during coldest weather from the upstream nuclear power plant. When trumpeter swans were reintroduced there in 1986, Sheila Lawrence who lived nearby started a daily feeding ritual. What began as a few swans has turned into thousands. And what was once a few buckets worth of corn has become nearly a ton a day. “The Swan Lady” passed away in 2011 but her husband continues the tradition. The area has become a mini park; a small lot between a couple houses, high above the feeding bank, fenced off so as not to disturb the birds below. I arrived at the park before dawn to be ready for sunrise. The sky was perfectly clear and the mix of extreme cold air and relatively warm water was creating massive billows of mist. Combined with the high winds, it looked like an armada of clouds was blowing down the Mississippi. There’s nothing better than swans floating through the mist in beautiful morning light. I shot until I ran out of memory and the golden hour light was gone, along with my last reserves of body heat. Headed back to the hotel to download and thaw.
This is a male trumpeter swan photographed during a snowstorm in late March. He and his mate were migrating north when they chose to wait out the storm on our pond in Tottenham, Ontario. That morning, I was surprised to see a pair of swans mixed in with the usual collection of geese and ducks that hang out in our open water. I quickly layered up, donned my waders and headed out, hoping I could get into position without scaring away the newcomers. I snuck up the creek to the dam under our bridge and hunkered down to get an eye-level view of the birds as they cruised around the pond, feeding and resting. The bridge protected me from the snow but the water, of course, was ice cold and my waders had a slow leak. So I’d shoot until my boots filled with water, sneak back inside to dry out, warm up, recharge camera batteries, and then sneak back out for another session. This lasted until the storm cleared in the afternoon and they flew off. The female was tagged and we later learned that she was a three-year-old released in Stratford, Ontario and spent her summers on Wye Marsh just north of us. She’d also been spotted several times in other area lakes. It was a great day of shooting and I knew I’d captured some memorable images but I had no idea just how lucky I’d been; the combination of snowstorm, diffused lighting, and super-telephoto lens created a unique effect that looked more painterly than photographic, giving him an angelic appearance.
A great blue heron caught in the morning light in search of breakfast. The forest behind him were still in dark shadow and reflecting in the pond, surrounded the bird in a deep black pool.
It was a moment of weakness. I was never a big fan of intentionally, blurred shots. I had tried a few early on when I began shooting but I didn’t really push the technique and was never all that satisfied with the resulting images. However, midway through my third trip to Bosque del Apache in New Mexico, I’d just about exhausted every angle, composition, and idea for shooting the cranes and geese. I wanted something different. I was ready for the blur. If you can pan with the birds and match their flight speed you’ve got a fair chance of getting the head in relatively good focus even when using a slow shutter. At the same time, panning with a slow exposure blurs and streaks the background. In addition, it allows the wings to blur. The resulting images can run the full gamut of totally abstract to hauntingly surreal and all of them convey the sense of motion better than birds frozen in mid-air. With so many variables it’s a bit of a crapshoot. Some images were way too abstract and I had many fails because I couldn’t get the heads sharp enough. But some like Diaphanous Descent blew me away. Now, I’m a believer.
Sandhill cranes and snow geese. New Mexico, United States.
The highlight of most mornings in the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge is when tens of thousands of snow geese blast off from the big pond. Actually there are two blast events: The first is before sunrise from the pond where they spent the night. Thousands of geese take off at once silhouetted against the first streaks of orange and purple sky. The timing is such that you can take photos of this event and then make it to the next staging area where MORNING GLORY was captured. The second-stage pond is where hundreds of sandhill cranes have spent the night. The geese from first pond join them and together they spend an hour or so milling about, resting, and preening. Once the sun clears the distant mountains, the cranes begin leaving one at a time and in small groups. They’ll spread out their departure this way over a couple hours. The geese on the other hand are unpredictable. You know they’re going to launch, en masse, but you never know when and no one knows what prompts them. It’s always after sunrise but it can happen right away or it can take a couple hours. So you have to keep alert. You might get advance warning and hear them begin to chatter in anticipation – gives you a chance to pick your area, like this cotton wood tree. But quite often you just hear the cacophony of thirty thousand wings beating as they explode off the water. It’s great drama in the desert.
Scootching made this shot possible. It’s often the case when I wake in the morning that I’ll look out from the bedroom window and see a heron on the pond. And as much as I’d like to go out to shoot I know from multiple past experiences that it’s almost impossible to get out there close enough to get a shot without spooking them. But occasionally there are two herons, which means there’s a chance that something interesting can happen between them as they jockey around the pond for territorial position. And while they distract each other there’s a chance they might not notice a big guy with a huge lens sneaking towards them. There wasn’t time to change so I just donned my camo hat and went out in my pajamas. I sat on my butt behind the camera and scootched forward along the wet grass whenever they weren’t looking. It took me a half an hour to work my way down the exposed hillside to the edge of the pond - a distance of a mere 60 feet. I finally reached the cover of the tall grass along the pond edge and from that vantage caught this sequence of one heron crossing to get away from the other. Then again, perhaps it was the pajamas.
