Sandhill Crane behavior at Whitewater Draw Wildlife Preserve, Arizona

My last article on Sandhill Cranes at Whitewater concentrated on low light in friendlier situations. Before dawn and after sunset, the cranes are quite active coming and going. ISO needs to be cranked up to attain images. This article is geared toward capturing behavior of our avian friends in friendlier lighting conditions.

Conversations

I call the behavior captured here conversations. Lots happening! 150-600mm @ 400mm 1/2500 sec. f/6.1 ISO 800

When the Sandhill Cranes jump, prance and dance it is usually associated with courtship and mating behavior. It can also be a release of energy or a way to say, “Hey! This is my territory (or woman)!” Wingspans that can reach seven feet are flashed with an accompanying jump, ensuring the display is magnificent. It can also be hard to capture in photos. Watching and learning behavior is a huge help. Look for indications when a new bird approaches another group for a good possibility of a dust-up. You’ll also notice that if there were several in a group all performing the jumps, there’s a good possibility behavior will be repeated. Focusing and framing the group gives you a better chance of capture. Remember to leave enough room as they came jump several feet. I have many images from when I first began photographing these large birds with heads and shoulders cut off.

Sandhiil performs the “Iron Cross” to a mostly indifferent audience. 150-600mm lens @ 358mm 1/10,000 sec f/6.0 ISO 5000

Isolation

A long lens can be a great help in singling out a Sandhill Crane for an entirely different look. Keep scanning the area to find a single or a pair of cranes to photograph for an entirely different feel of mood. Finding vignettes within the hoards can help tell the story yet still be part of capturing behavior.

A quiet moment amid all the activity ot the thousands or cranes gathered. 150-600mm lens @600mm 1/2500th sec. f/6.3 ISO 640

Sandhill Cranes in flight

Capturing these large birds in flight is much easier than making images of smaller species. It still takes some study, practice and skill to get solid captures. I found many more keepers on my camera cards when I started using a gimbal on a tripod. Makes a huge difference in tracking the birds.

Camera was trained on the trees in the distance while waiting for the birds to enter the scene to ensure a nice background. 150-500mm lens at 449mm 1/3200th sec. f/6.2 ISO 2000.

It’s also helpful to have a camera that will follow focus. Barring that, try to capture birds in flight across your field of view so they stay the same distance and stay in focus.

Once again, behavior is key to getting stronger images. If you are always chasing birds to get them in flight, you’ll have a ton of misses. Watch and learn how they take off, in which direction they fly and indicators of when they will take off. In addition, if you note there is a nice background that the birds fly past, you can keep your camera there and wait for them. All of these things add to the number of keepers!

Beginning of the fly-in. 40-150mm lens @ 70mm 1/10th sec. f/10 ISO 200. This shows the stabilization capabilities of the OM System cameras. This was handheld and cropped into a panorama.

Gear

OM-1 Mark I (Mark II is available with an even better sensor) with the OM System 150-600mm f/5-6.3 IS ED lens. A second OM-1 body was fitted with the OM System M. Zuiko 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro lens. Note that the Micro Four Thirds system has a doubling of the field of view of a full frame camera so the reach is pretty amazing. The 600mm comes out as a 1200mm FF FOV. During the day, I added the MC 14 1.4X Teleconverter which resulted in an equivalent FF reach of almost 1700mm. Folks were checking out my LCD and wowed by how much detail could be brought in with the combination.

All images made with the 40-150mm Pro lens were handheld. Tripod for the 150-600mm lens was the FotoPro Eagles series E-7 gimbal carbon fiber model (I’m also a Fotopro Ambassador).

Yours in Creative Photography,

Bob

• Posted on November 22, 2024