Tag Archives: flight

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

White Faced Ibises, Clouds and Sky

May 20, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of white-faced ibises is silhouetted against early spring evening sky above the San Joaquin Valley

I have what almost amounts to a tradition of making a weeklong visit to Death Valley near the end of March and beginning of April, that time of year when this desert landscape oscillates between winter and summer conditions and when the flowers bloom.. After a week or so in that austere landscape I am usually quite ready to see green and a greater density of living things. I’m also ready to get home! On a typical final day of the trip I do a bit of photography in the morning and then leave the park well before noon and start the long drive home. During the last few years I have made it my practice to leave early enough that I can just make it to one of my favorite San Joaquin Valley bird locations before the sun sets.

It has been a series of drought years in California and this was the worst one so far. When I drove do Death Valley things were still just as dry as we would expect in such a year. But while I was in the park a series of winter storms swept across the state—finally! I saw some rain and snow in DEVA, but by the time I got to the Central Valley is was clear from the puddles and ponds that a real storm had come through. I drove on up highway 99 and turned west toward my destination and found fields that were actually green. And on arriving at the wildlife refuge I was greeted by the smell of damp air and plants and the sounds of birds. What a contrast to Death Valley! Close to dusk we found a large flock of dark-colored birds in the shallow water nearby, and a closer inspection showed them to be white-faced ibises, settling in where the now departed geese would have distracted us from such quiet birds a few weeks or months earlier. As the evening wore on, large groups flew in, circled, and then descended to join the flock… including this group that passed in front of delicate dusk clouds and blue hour sky.

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

Snow Geese and Sky

March 30, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Six snow geese against blue sky and thin clouds

When out photographing winter birds in the Central Valley of California there are so many things to photograph and so many ways to photograph them. It might be perfectly blue-sky clear, it might be foggy, or there could be the precursor or remnant clouds of a Pacific weather front. There might be agricultural subjects nearby—cattle, barns and other structures, fields. Or I could end up in a town, with its farmland character. And there are always the birds—close up photographs of individuals, groups clustering together, huge flocks. They might be in trees, on the water, flying, feeding in fields.

While it is perhaps not the sort of shot that I most like, I can’t help myself from photographing groups of birds that fly over. I’m not sure if it the continuing desire to get the perfect arrangement of birds in motion, the technical challenge of making a photograph of such rapidly moving targets, or some primal hunting instinct… but I do know that when I’m not photographing something else compelling, I’ll fire off a lot of photographs of birds in flight. And we had plenty of them on this mid-February day, when the birds seemed both more willing to let us be close and more likely to take flight. This group separated from a much larger flock that was wheeling overhead and passed almost above me before turning west into the sun.

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

Two Cranes, Sunrise

February 26, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Two cranes fly in front the rising sun above San Joaquin Valley wetlands

On New Years Eve 2013 I arrived back in the San Francisco Bay Area from New York after 10:00 PM. 8 hours later (2 hours of unpacking, four hours of sleep, and two hours of driving) I was in the Central Valley, where I met friends to greet the (literal) dawn of 2014 in the company of wild birds. We arrived before sunrise to find light fog drifting about and to hear the sounds of thousands of birds coming from every direction.

We made a few initial photographs before dawn from very close to our meeting location, and then we headed out into this wildlife area to find locations from which the birds (geese, cranes, herons, pelicans, and more) would be more visible. A few minutes later I looked over my left shoulder to see the very first sliver of the sun barely glowing through the layers of fog as cranes and other birds flew across the horizon above the marshland. I quickly found this spot where there was a small tree and where a bit of the further water was visible and I photographed though the sunrise, until the sun rose above the low mist and became to bright to include in the frame. There was a constant flow of birds across the scene – sometimes hundreds of them and sometimes, as in this scene, only a few.

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

Cranes and Geese, Sunset, Reflecting Pond

January 31, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cranes fly through evening sky above geese in a San Joaquin Valley pond.

I made this photograph on New Year’s Day 2014. Two years ago it seemed like a good idea to begin the new year by greeting its first dawn in the San Joaquin Valley, and sharing the experience with thousands of migratory birds and a few like-minded friends. Getting there was a stretch this year – late the previous night I had arrived home from a week in New York City, and getting up four hours later to drive two hours in the dark was going to be a challenge. But I made it and after photographing through the morning I thought that I might just head home. In the early afternoon we broke off from the photography and went to nearby town to grab something to eat, and by the time we were done it was only an hour or less until the evening “show” would begin back in the wetlands, so I shelved by early departure plans and headed back into the field.

I’m glad I did. It turned out to be a very beautiful evening, with many thousands of birds and with an unexpectedly beautiful sky. Often when it seems a bit gray and “blah” in the late afternoon, the evening light can end up illuminating this thick atmosphere, turning it both colorful and near-transparent. That is what happened here as I was photographing a large group of Ross’s geese that had settled in on the wetlands near this small tree. As the light diminished, I hoped for a fly-in of the sandhill cranes, which can be one of the most magical moments of any day in this area. Unlike the geese, which tend toward raucous and unpredictable behavior, the sandhill cranes seem to show up in large groups right at dusk, mostly gliding smoothly above the ponds as they head for their landing spots.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: flight

White Faced Ibises, Clouds and Sky

Snow Geese and Sky

Two Cranes, Sunrise

Cranes and Geese, Sunset, Reflecting Pond

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