Tag Archives: birds

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

The Cranes Return, Evening

February 5, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The sandhill cranes return to the marshes of the San Joaquin Valley at dusk on a mid-winter evening.

For reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, the evening return of the sandhill cranes is one of the magical things among a host of magical things about central California’s winter migratory bird population. I think I was primed to regard these birds this way by reading about them many years ago, though I never quite new what sandhill cranes actually were and I presumed that they were only found in far-off places. Then when I first began to photograph birds seriously – which was only a few years ago – one of my first encounters with the winter bird popular involved finding sandhill cranes in fields south of Sacramento. Then, perhaps last winter, there was an evening at a wildlife refuge in the Central Valley when I was photographing geese with a small group of friends. There had been many, many Ross’s geese around that evening and as dusk approached the goose photography gradually came to an end as the geese departed. After the intense focus of shooting those birds, once they were gone we sort of looked up and realized that the sun was gone and that the world was quieting down. It seemed like the show was over. And then I heard a sound from over the trees to the southeast, a sound I now immediately recognize as the distinctive call of the cranes, and within moments huge flocks of these birds began to coast overhead and look for landing spots.

That is now how I expect to see them – at some point during the dusk period when most everything else has started to quiet down, the cranes appear. Their sound is a distinct contrast with the wild and raucous cackling of the geese, an altogether calmer and quieter call. And their mode of flight is also different. While the geese often launch loudly into the sky in huge, flapping clouds, the cranes coast in slowly and rather quietly, often in long lines, and their motion is slower and smoother. On this evening, at a point when there was barely enough light left to make photographs, they appeared to my left and crossed in front of me with the western dusk sky as a backdrop.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Wildlife

Two Trumpeter Swans in Flight

February 4, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A pair of trumpeter swans in flight above Skagit Valley farmland on a cloudy and rainy day, Washington

I had about four or five hours in the Skagit Valley area of Washington in the beginning of December, after the tasks I had gone to Washington for were completed early. I drove up from the Seattle area in the rain, and it was still cloudy, windy, and rainy when I arrived – just what one might expect in December in the Pacific Northwest! The last time I had been there, a year ago, I had encountered amazing flocks of snow geese in a field near the road not far from where it rises to cross the river, and my first thought was that I’d see if this was a regular event or if I had just been lucky the previous year. I must have been lucky! This time there was not a goose to be seen, at least at first, at this location.

Given this development, I decided to poke around on some back roads in the area and see if I could get close enough to trumpeter swans to photograph them with my meager little 200mm focal length lens – about half the length of what I would usually use for this sort of subject. By moving carefully, using my car as a blind, and sitting quietly and waiting, I was able to get a few close shots of the swans in a field. I soon figured out that they would occasionally lift off and fly to another nearby field where there were other swans, so I positioned myself (in the car) between the two flocks and settled in to see what would happen. Sure enough, before long groups of two or more swans started to fly my direction and pass close to the car, usually rising a bit as they passed over. This pair made a bit of a turn around me, so I photographed them against the cloud-filled sky.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Five Birds, Marsh

January 31, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Five birds take flight above a foggy marsh

I’ll be honest and admit that this photograph emerged from a group of exposures that resulted from operator error! While dealing with some complicated and varying exposure issues that I won’t explain here, I switched from photographing one sort of subject to photographing another… but left the settings for the former in place as I shot the latter. My first thought when I went through my files initially was that every one of these exposures would likely deserve to be deleted. But because I’ve been working with motion blur, longer exposures, camera motion, and so forth recently, I figured I might as well take a look and see what I could do with the images.

Essentially, I ended up using a shutter speed that was much lower than I intended and overexposing, creating very high key images. For these reasons and because I was panning to track the small group of birds, almost all distinct detail is gone from the scene with the exception of the birds. The tule-covered islands in the marsh above which the birds are flying barely hold their shape – enough, I think, to imply what they are but certainly not enough to provide any real detail.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Cranes and Geese, Morning Fog

January 29, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Sandhill cranes and Ross’s Geese in flight through clearing morning fog, San Joaquin Valley

While I still cannot resist the challenge of trying to get a good, sharp photograph of a bird filling the frame, more and more I’m interested less in individual birds and more in their environment and their place in it, along with trying to evoke a sense of what these places are like. I think these photographs are meant more to be suggestive than descriptive, and I’m happy if not everything is quite clear to see. (I can tell you that being in these places, not everything is clear either!)

The fog was playing interesting games with us on this morning. This location often seems to be foggy, even when nearby areas are clear, probably because it is low and very wet. Compared to some mornings, it was not as foggy as it can be when we arrived, and it was possible to see some distance as we drove the gravel road that circles the marsh. We found a likely area to stop and photograph birds, including cranes, geese, pelicans, ducks, and more. Close to sunrise, it suddenly became more foggy, to the point that many nearby objects were obscured – even though the fog was so shallow that birds flying just above it were illuminated by weak dawn light. This photograph is one of a series I made as small groups of sandhill cranes came towards us from across a pond. Handholding the camera I tracked them as they approached, trying to make exposures as they moved into position against any sort of interesting background. Here that background turned out to be a few other birds – mostly geese – and some clumps of reeds barely visible in the fog.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: birds

The Cranes Return, Evening

Two Trumpeter Swans in Flight

Five Birds, Marsh

Cranes and Geese, Morning Fog

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.