April 19, 2016

Sandhill #1
Bozeman, Montana
2016

As far as bird photography goes, I am primarily interested in crows, ravens, and magpies. But I am not adverse to pointing my camera at other species if the opportunity presents itself. I was out cruising for corvids east of town the other day. I had no luck finding any but came across six sandhill cranes in a field.

Interestingly, these sandhills were much less skittish than are the crows and ravens I come across out in the country. I suspect that is due to the corvids often being the targets of yahoos with guns who view them as trash species. The sandhills must get more respect as these let me stand there at the fence and photograph them from less than 100 feet away for quite a while before flying off. In this particular case though it was the few good shots of them flying that were the most picturesque. It was the so-called magic hour for photography, which helped create the dramatic lighting in this image.