Tag Archives: swans

Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Flock of Tundra Swans

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Flock of Tundra Swans
A flock of tundra swans aloft in evening light about the Klamath Basin

Flock of Tundra Swans. Klamath Basin, Oregon. February 12, 2015. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A flock of tundra swans aloft in evening light about the Klamath Basin

More tundra swans — and I’m not finished yet! I don’t get to see these birds all that often at my usual Central California wildlife photography locations, so finding quite large numbers up here along the California-Oregon border has been pretty exciting. It turns out that while I was here a bit too early for the massive migration of some birds (I hear the geese will be back here in a couple of weeks) I seem to have arrived at just about the right moment for the tundra swans.

This day turned out to be the best for photographing these birds. Early in the morning I happened on a pair of ponds lining a short roadway, and both ponds held good size flocks. The morning light wasn’t quite right so I moved on and photographed other things, but in the evening I was back. During the final half hour or so before sunset, flocks of these birds began to stream back from the south, and I quickly headed back to this pond where I had seen  them earlier, figuring that some of them might land here. I was not disappointed! And the light was spectacular, starting out as typical warm-colored late day light against blue toned sky and clouds, and then later lighting up with a brilliant colored sunset.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Tundra Swans

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Tundra Swans
A trio of tundra swans in flight in the Klamath Basin

Tundra Swans. Klamath Basin, California. February 12, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A trio of tundra swans in flight in the Klamath Basin

I don’t usually do this, but I’m posting this photograph while I’m still in the field. It is a photograph I made earlier this evening, in the Klamath Basin in far Northern California — so far north in the state that I could look across the road and see Oregon. I’ve been photographing migratory birds in my “home range” of the California Central Valley for so long that I decided it was time to push out those boundaries a bit this season. I’ll share more about what this experience has taught me in a later post.

It is a challenge to photograph in a new place, especially when the subject is wildlife and double-especially when I arrived well after dark the previous night and had to head out again in pre-dawn darkness to find locations I’ve never been to before! Fortunately, I ended up in an area with quite a few birds — though not the dense flocks that I’m used to from some places I more frequently photograph. Here the main show involved a few golden eagles and a large number of tundra swans. I’ve only photographed tundra swans a few times in the past, since they are not all that plentiful in the places I usually visit. But here there were thousands of them, and I ended up photographing them in the morning and then again at the end of the day. From a distance grounded tundra swans look a lot like geese, though larger and with longer necks. Up close you notice that their bills are black, and they make rather different sounds that geese. Their flight patterns are not like geese either. The lumber into the air like jumbo jets loaded for intercontinental flights, gaining elevation very slowly and then flying in a smooth and level path.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Two Trumpeter Swans in Flight

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Two Trumpeter Swans in Flight
Two Trumpeter Swans in Flight

Two Trumpeter Swans in Flight. Skagit Valley, Washington. December 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Wildlife

Trumpeter Swans and Clouds

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Trumpeter Swans and Clouds Trumpeter Swans and Clouds
Trumpeter Swans and Clouds Trumpeter Swans and Clouds

Trumpeter Swans and Clouds. Skagit Valley, Washington. December 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Four trumpeter swans on a raining day in Skagit Valley, Washington

I visited the Seattle area in early December for mostly non-photographic purposes, but found myself with with an open schedule on the day when my departing flight was not scheduled to leave until evening. I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to do some photography, so I considered street photography in downtown Seattle (plus a museum visit). Then I remembered that I had shot in Skagit Valley last year at roughly the same time and had found lots of interesting birds to photograph – trumpeter swans, eagles, snow geese, and more.

On this trip I wasn’t exactly equipped for bird photography, at least not the sort I would usually do, but I did have a 70-200mm zoom and I know it is possible to make interesting bird photographs with such a lens. So I was up fairly early for the one hour drive north. It rained off and on during my drive, and it was still mostly cloudy and gray when I arrived to find trumpeter swans in their usual spots on the winter fields. (Later I would also find some snow geese, but I’ll save that story for now.) Typically, I would photograph this subject with my 100-400mm zoom, but having nothing longer than 200mm in my bag, I had to think a bit differently about how to photograph these birds. Several strategies worked. One was to use my rental car as a “blind” and slowly and carefully position myself where they might be close enough to photograph with that lens. Another approach was to basically shoot landscape, but include the birds in the scene. The third option, used in this photograph, was to find a spot along one of the country roads where the birds were likely to pass directly overhead or nearly so and wait. These birds have a style of flight that somehow reminds me of a very large jetliner. The use a very low angle take-off, seeming almost as if they are too massive to climb much faster. But once in flight they are beautiful and graceful with their long necks and generally smooth mode of flight. In this photograph I watched as they passed in front of darker rain clouds before making the exposure, isolating the birds against the clouds and with no frame of reference on the ground.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.