Two weeks ago, a photographer, scheduled to attend the Rockport Whooping Crane Photo Tour the following week, emailed to say she thought it would be best to cancel since rain was forecast for those days. I looked again at the 10 day forecast and was reassured that both days were predicted to be sunny with a high each day of 57 degrees. With that information in hand, I convinced her to come on down. The rain wasn’t scheduled to start until after the photo tour.
Well, the forecasters were off just a bit…we had highs of 42 and 39 degrees for the photo tour with hard north winds. But, hey, it didn’t rain! The cranes were abundant and active, but those poor photographers suffered every minute they were on deck. The bitter cold certainly took a lot of the fun out of that trip. A windy 40 degrees at Rockport is like a dry 15 degrees at Bosque del Apache, N.M..
After photographing cranes in the mornings, we worked other habitats for ducks, herons and songbirds in the afternoons. Still, it was mighty tough shooting with the cold wind and heavy clouds blocking most of the light. Some sample photos are included here, just to let you know it’s a great place to photograph in the winter, even when it’s cold.
Click on the photos to open them in a larger and sharper format. You can also view them in order by clicking on “next” in the upper right corner.
Many of the endangered whooping crane pairs had young with them this winter.
That rusty colored bird in the middle is a young of the year. It will lose most of those reddish brown feathers by spring.
Whooping crane pairs with young were easily disturbed when others got too close to feeding territory boundries. Several times each day, we saw a fussy adult bird fly over to chase away the intruding cranes.
With the wind and heavy cloud cover, we had to shoot with high ISO settings (ISO 800-1200) most of the time. On a positive note, that gave us a reason to discuss “noise reduction” in Photoshop and how to sharpen after smoothing out the noise in digital photos.
This whooper was not the least bit disturbed by our presence while we enjoyed this close-up photo op.It was encouraging to see the salt marshes around Aransas National Wildlife Refuge had a good crop of young blue crabs, the whoopers' primary winter food source.
This pair of whooping cranes provided us with many photography opportunities during 4 recent trips to Aransas Refuge.
The whooping crane shots were taken with a Canon 7D camera, Canon 500 mm IS lens, 1.4 X teleconverter (except the two close-up shots), Gitzo cf tripod and Wimberley head. I tried to keep a high shutter speed (1/2,000 second when possible) on all occasions since the wind was strong and the light was limited.
Ruby-crowned kinglets were in a feeding frenzy during the cold weather. One got so close, I was able to pet it without disturbing its feeding activity.
Yellow-rumped warblers seem to be especially abundant in south Texas this winter.
This female northern shoveler banked at just the right time to give me this shot of the wing colors.
Drake green-winged teal napping on the marsh at the Port Aransas boardwalk.
Great blue heron in a quiet pond.
This great blue heron appeared to be in breeding plumage when I photographed it wading about a hidden pond at Port Aransas. There was no time to remove the teleconverter when I got this shot, so I missed the full reflection. That happens when one is working warblers and herons at the same location.
I will be doing a photo talk the first Wednesday night of February at the La Posada Hotel in Laredo for their second annual birding festival. Then, I’ll be in Galveston for Featherfest the first week of April to do several workshops and tours. Read about it and sign up at : http://www.galvestonfeatherfest.com/PhotoFest_Descriptions.php
