Saturday, June 16, 2007

Sandhill Cranes

Yesterday, at Carlos, I was happy to again find the cranes. This shot was taken with the car-window camera mount, as were the following photos. They were all taken with a 300mm lens; the top one is with a 1.4x teleconverter, the bottom ones are with a 2x. The relative sharpness of the images is testimony to the stability of the window mount.
Note the Great Blue Heron a little further away and to the right, together with some geese in front. The birds were at least 1/4 mi. away. That's why I was pleased to find the subjects of the next photos.

In contrast with my previous visit to Carlos with Jim, I was able to find this crane at a more comfortable photo-taking distance. It was in the Pool 7 area.

As I was busy squeezing off a bunch of shots, much to my surprise, the crane on the left popped up. The grass is getting so tall there that when the birds bow down to feed one cannot see them.

This is the same pair a little West of the previous location. Note how the grass is even taller here. No little one in sight though.