With the sandhill crane season winding down, it looks like we'll only have 2 visits to Whitewater Draw this year. As normal,
every visit is different, depending on temperature, water level, and a variety of other things I still don't understand. Sometimes we see an abundance of birds we never see again, but the one constant is that there are typically lots of cranes, usually tens of thousands... This year we went on 5 Jan, and again 4 weeks later on 2 February. The big difference for me between the 2 visits is that last weekend I lugged the big 11cm diameter, 770mm focal length refractor, getting me closer to our buddies there than ever before. As a result, the picture quality is incomparable, and other than the last image below, all images are from the most recent visit with said lens. I'm still amazed that even at full camera resolution you can pick out tiny details! At left here as an example, are the same 2 cranes as headlined the last blog post. This shot was taken not only with the 770mm, but with an additional 1.4X extender (1080mm focal length!), which I only used to take a half dozen frames. The additional focal length makes it harder to focus, narrows the depth of field, and amplifies the shaking and platform wobbles as people walk nearby. But at the same time, you can see the lower crane has a bit of a hook to his beak - another view I've never seen before! Clicking on the image will load the image's full resolution, ie, not resampled to make a smaller file - it is cropped from the "actual pixels" image from Photoshop...
With such a closer view, you start to observe little details, some pretty mundane, like taking a drink of water. I've never noticed before nor realized their long neck might create difficulties. At least this fellow here scoops a mouth full of water, then raises his head to let gravity help it run down his (her?) throat. The still water's reflection is an added bonus...
While wintering here they spend their days feeding in nearby fields and return to the wetlands to avoid predators - enjoying both safety in numbers and using the shallow pools of water to ward off coyotes. But those are not the only things on their mind - there seems to be a lot of posturing and conflict going on! I don't understand these things and Wikipedia doesn't discuss it, but there seems to be battles for some sort of domination going on. You can often see these very short battles going on with their considerable wingspan extended, beaks poised as deadly weapons. Of course, for a 2 second battle, the telescope is rarely pointed in the right direction, but I did catch this sequence right about sunset. Occasionally you see them hop/fly up and also wield their feet as weapons too. Several were spotted with a beak full of feathers, so they do play seriously!
By this third shot at left, the bird to the left has turned, and you can see his previous battle scars - some missing feather from his left wing (seen also in first pic above). A second or two later the conflict is resolved and the combatants dissolve into the crowd. Since I can't tell boys from girls, I don't know if it is a male thing or not. Most of the cranes seem totally uninterested in these sorts of things, like the fellow at right, standing on one leg, beak tucked under wing for a standing nap...
The telescope was great for catching them in flight as well. My technique on calibrating the focus and adjusting the camera diopter setting to match my eye seemed to work well, as many of the shots where I caught them in flight seemed pretty well-focused. The image at right is a favorite - also shown at full camera resolution, the view of them flying is almost from right over their shoulder, showing them, muddy feet and all! Of course, as it got darker, longer exposures were needed - I even tried some shots for an artistic effect. Longer exposures as they flapped their wings added an interesting feel to the images, at right a tenth of a second exposure.
There was a single non-avian observation - one of the Large Binocular Telescope, seemingly watching over us from atop Mount graham 80 miles to the north. They park it in the same location every day, which catches the rays of the setting sun for observers down at Whitewater. It is very apparent as a brilliant orange-yellow spot as the sun sets from our location. The picture shows how the LBT building dominates the profile of Graham with it's boxlike structure. The brightest part of the reflection is actually from the glass-lined observing room and dining area with a direct solar reflection at the bottom of the structure. Clicking the image to load the larger view, to the left of LBT you can also see the Vatican Observatory just above the tree line. There is a third major structure in the Sub-Millimeter Telescope, which I do not spot in this image. This single image is a bit underexposed so as to not blow out the details in the LBT structure...
Oh - and there were birds other than cranes there! Several of their lagoons, normally flooded were dry this year. Someone mentioned they were trying to control weed overgrowth in them, but as a result, many of the waterfowl normally found there were absent. We didn't spot the grebes, buffelheads and many duck varieties we'd seen in recent years. And the yellow-headed blackbirds that were so numerous a year or two ago were almost totally missing this year. American coots are also normally abundant, but only a couple were spotted. But there were a good supply of green-winged teals - the male shown here shows a nice pattern of op-art B&W feathers along with his characteristic head banding. This bird got pretty close, yet I was able to focus on him at the 20 yard distance or so. It is hard not to demonstrate the fine detail in the image with the full-rez crop at right. Note the double-sun reflection in his eye - one directly from the sky, one reflected off the water... Again, it is the same image, just a crop at full resolution...
While the numbers were down somewhat from previous years, there were still some northern shovelers feeding in front of us as well. with the sun behind me, the iridescence of the head and wing feather was quite good. Another new bird for me was the long billed dowitcher. They were quite interesting when a group of them were feeding in shallow water, bills extended downwards, heads moving up and down like little sewing machines. I also liked this one for the reflection in the water - couldn't make myself crop it out!
Finally among the last pictures taken last weekend were the silhouette of cranes against the sunset-tinted water. Again, this and all the above pictures were taken with the 770mm focal length William Optics 11cm, F/7 apochromatic refractor. We have yet to get through Melinda's pictures - she is recovering from a brief bout with the flu, so may well yet post some of her shots. I'm going to close with the one shot from our early January trip to Whitewater. The wetlands is a long way from anywhere, and while we've always thought about doing some night time observing there, our wintertime visits are invariably frigid and after being out for a few hours watching birds, staying later always seems like a bad idea. But in January, I wanted to take a self-portrait of myself against the twin spires of the Milky Way and Zodiacal light. I found a berm not far from the car and after everything was packed up from birding, set up the tripod and 16mm fisheye lens for the 45 second exposure. The horizon glows are from Tucson at far right, Tombstone and Sierra Vista left of center. As for the sky glows, the Milky Way galaxy extends upwards on the right half of the exposure, and the diffuse glow of the Zodiacal Light at left. The latter is rarely seen, but is sunlight reflected off dust and meteoritic particles in the plane of the solar system. As an added benefit, the planet Mars is centered in the Zodiacal Light where it meets the horizon. Seems a suitable bookend shot for this year's visits to one of our Winter stomping grounds...
With the sandhill crane season winding down, it looks like we'll only have 2 visits to Whitewater Draw this year. As normal, every visit is different, depending on temperature, water level, and a variety of other things I still don't understand. Sometimes we see an abundance of birds we never see again, but the one constant is that there are typically lots of cranes, usually tens of thousands... This year we went on 5 Jan, and again 4 weeks later on 2 February. The big difference for me between the 2 visits is that last weekend I lugged the big 11cm diameter, 770mm focal length refractor, getting me closer to our buddies there than ever before. As a result, the picture quality is incomparable, and other than the last image below, all images are from the most recent visit with said lens. I'm still amazed that even at full camera resolution you can pick out tiny details! At left here as an example, are the same 2 cranes as headlined the last blog post. This shot was taken not only with the 770mm, but with an additional 1.4X extender (1080mm focal length!), which I only used to take a half dozen frames. The additional focal length makes it harder to focus, narrows the depth of field, and amplifies the shaking and platform wobbles as people walk nearby. But at the same time, you can see the lower crane has a bit of a hook to his beak - another view I've never seen before! Clicking on the image will load the image's full resolution, ie, not resampled to make a smaller file - it is cropped from the "actual pixels" image from Photoshop...
With such a closer view, you start to observe little details, some pretty mundane, like taking a drink of water. I've never noticed before nor realized their long neck might create difficulties. At least this fellow here scoops a mouth full of water, then raises his head to let gravity help it run down his (her?) throat. The still water's reflection is an added bonus...
While wintering here they spend their days feeding in nearby fields and return to the wetlands to avoid predators - enjoying both safety in numbers and using the shallow pools of water to ward off coyotes. But those are not the only things on their mind - there seems to be a lot of posturing and conflict going on! I don't understand these things and Wikipedia doesn't discuss it, but there seems to be battles for some sort of domination going on. You can often see these very short battles going on with their considerable wingspan extended, beaks poised as deadly weapons. Of course, for a 2 second battle, the telescope is rarely pointed in the right direction, but I did catch this sequence right about sunset. Occasionally you see them hop/fly up and also wield their feet as weapons too. Several were spotted with a beak full of feathers, so they do play seriously!
By this third shot at left, the bird to the left has turned, and you can see his previous battle scars - some missing feather from his left wing (seen also in first pic above). A second or two later the conflict is resolved and the combatants dissolve into the crowd. Since I can't tell boys from girls, I don't know if it is a male thing or not. Most of the cranes seem totally uninterested in these sorts of things, like the fellow at right, standing on one leg, beak tucked under wing for a standing nap...
The telescope was great for catching them in flight as well. My technique on calibrating the focus and adjusting the camera diopter setting to match my eye seemed to work well, as many of the shots where I caught them in flight seemed pretty well-focused. The image at right is a favorite - also shown at full camera resolution, the view of them flying is almost from right over their shoulder, showing them, muddy feet and all! Of course, as it got darker, longer exposures were needed - I even tried some shots for an artistic effect. Longer exposures as they flapped their wings added an interesting feel to the images, at right a tenth of a second exposure.
There was a single non-avian observation - one of the Large Binocular Telescope, seemingly watching over us from atop Mount graham 80 miles to the north. They park it in the same location every day, which catches the rays of the setting sun for observers down at Whitewater. It is very apparent as a brilliant orange-yellow spot as the sun sets from our location. The picture shows how the LBT building dominates the profile of Graham with it's boxlike structure. The brightest part of the reflection is actually from the glass-lined observing room and dining area with a direct solar reflection at the bottom of the structure. Clicking the image to load the larger view, to the left of LBT you can also see the Vatican Observatory just above the tree line. There is a third major structure in the Sub-Millimeter Telescope, which I do not spot in this image. This single image is a bit underexposed so as to not blow out the details in the LBT structure...
Oh - and there were birds other than cranes there! Several of their lagoons, normally flooded were dry this year. Someone mentioned they were trying to control weed overgrowth in them, but as a result, many of the waterfowl normally found there were absent. We didn't spot the grebes, buffelheads and many duck varieties we'd seen in recent years. And the yellow-headed blackbirds that were so numerous a year or two ago were almost totally missing this year. American coots are also normally abundant, but only a couple were spotted. But there were a good supply of green-winged teals - the male shown here shows a nice pattern of op-art B&W feathers along with his characteristic head banding. This bird got pretty close, yet I was able to focus on him at the 20 yard distance or so. It is hard not to demonstrate the fine detail in the image with the full-rez crop at right. Note the double-sun reflection in his eye - one directly from the sky, one reflected off the water... Again, it is the same image, just a crop at full resolution...
While the numbers were down somewhat from previous years, there were still some northern shovelers feeding in front of us as well. with the sun behind me, the iridescence of the head and wing feather was quite good. Another new bird for me was the long billed dowitcher. They were quite interesting when a group of them were feeding in shallow water, bills extended downwards, heads moving up and down like little sewing machines. I also liked this one for the reflection in the water - couldn't make myself crop it out!
Finally among the last pictures taken last weekend were the silhouette of cranes against the sunset-tinted water. Again, this and all the above pictures were taken with the 770mm focal length William Optics 11cm, F/7 apochromatic refractor. We have yet to get through Melinda's pictures - she is recovering from a brief bout with the flu, so may well yet post some of her shots. I'm going to close with the one shot from our early January trip to Whitewater. The wetlands is a long way from anywhere, and while we've always thought about doing some night time observing there, our wintertime visits are invariably frigid and after being out for a few hours watching birds, staying later always seems like a bad idea. But in January, I wanted to take a self-portrait of myself against the twin spires of the Milky Way and Zodiacal light. I found a berm not far from the car and after everything was packed up from birding, set up the tripod and 16mm fisheye lens for the 45 second exposure. The horizon glows are from Tucson at far right, Tombstone and Sierra Vista left of center. As for the sky glows, the Milky Way galaxy extends upwards on the right half of the exposure, and the diffuse glow of the Zodiacal Light at left. The latter is rarely seen, but is sunlight reflected off dust and meteoritic particles in the plane of the solar system. As an added benefit, the planet Mars is centered in the Zodiacal Light where it meets the horizon. Seems a suitable bookend shot for this year's visits to one of our Winter stomping grounds...
nice images, really like the crane silhouette.
ReplyDeletesnowing here too..... brrrr.......