Picture of the week

Sandhill Crane duo

A pair of sandhill cranes on their morning depature from some flooded fields off Staten Island Road.  I was out at this location off Walnut Grove Road as well as at the nearby Cosumnes River Preserve earlier this week (10/29) in the morning hours before and after sunrise.  Given the limited water this year, the availability of flooded fields for roosting birds is more limited.  However a portion of open fields off Staten Island Road are an exception, and many cranes numbering in the hundreds have flocked here.  In these fields I also noted a number of northern pintails, black necked stilts, canada and white fronted geese, and sandpipers.

Once some of the cranes were in the air I noticed a few happened to be flying in the vicinity of the nearly full moon.  Luckliy I was able to capture one of these birds just as it passed over the moon from my angle of view (as shown below).  Later, after most of the cranes departed from the Staten Island flooded areas, I then drove out to the Cosumnes River preserve and explored the main observations areas from the northwest parking lot (across the road and to the right from the visitor center).  As I walked along the path I caught a glimpse of two elusive wilson's snipes quickly fly off and into the grass at the water's edge another 30 feet from me.  After going on a snipe hunt for the next 30 minutes (or more of just remaining quiet, moving slowly, and waiting them to walk into my field of view), I was finally able to capture a more open shot of one of the snipes as shown by the image in the lower right corner.  During the same visit I also spotted some type of rail quickly dart away, but it flew to the far side of the pond and was too fast to establish any sort of identification.

The photography in the morning at sunrise was more challenging given the flooded areas are currently on the east side of Staten Island Road, thus forcing some shooting into the sun.  This lended itselt to more silhouette style compositions, but I was able to counter some of shadows on the lee side of the birds via exposure adjustments in Lightroom to bring up a surprising amount of the shadow detail.  Shooting in raw helps for this type of situation.  In hindsight I should have brought my flash with the Better Beamer fresnel flash extender in order to get more fill light on the birds in flight.

Equipment-wise: For most of these shots (including the one above) I used a Canon EOS 7D mark II with an EF 500 f/4L IS mark I lens on a Wimberly gimbal head.  For some of the wide field of views and other opportunistic situations I also had my Canon 70D with the EF 100-400mm f/4-5.6L IS mark I hanging from my neck.  Given the orientation of the water with respect to the road, I will probably be back in a few days at sunset to shoot this location again, and under hopefully more ideal lighting conditions.

Cranes at dawn	Crane silhouette	Sandhill Crane pair	Crane over the moon
Sunrise over Staten Island	A busy birding morning	Golden crane	Trio of cranes
Canada geese morning fly-out	Killdeer doppelganger	Green winged teal	Elusive wilson's snipe

All content and images are property of Stephen Fischer Photography, copyright 2010-2015.  Last updated: 11/1/2015   ()