Sandhill Crane Feathers, Sunrise, New Mexico, 2011
(Click image to enlarge)
A pair of sandhill cranes wandered nearby while poking and prodding in the mud to find worms and other insects. With globs of mud covering their beaks they were not very photogenic but their feathers in the warm light of the sunrise were. I added a doubler to a 600mm F/4 lens for a 1200 mm focal length, stopped down as much as possible for depth of field,. and boosted the ISO to only 400 to avoid detail spoiling noise in the image. This left me with a 1/100 second exposure time so everything had to be still to avoid blur.
The cranes were stationary between movements, but I needed a shot in which the side of one was as parallel to my camera (as perpendicular to the lens axis) as possible so the entire image would be sharp. That meant having the camera at the same height as the center of the image and capturing it when the bird was turned in exactly the right direction. I captured dozens of images before the light became less pleasing. While not perfect, this is the best.
This particular crane had more intensely colored feathers than is typical. Sandhill cranes actually dye their drab gray feathers during the breeding season by preening iron-rich mud into their breast and back feathers. There are many other photographs of sandhill cranes in the North American Birds gallery on this website.
Fossil evidence indicates that sandhill cranes have survived unchanged for more than 10 million years, making them the oldest bird species existing today. Mated pairs stay together year round. Their courtship commences with an elaborate mating dance where the birds face each other, make croaking noises, and jump several feet into the air with extended wings. Then they bow to each other and repeat the ritual many times. Once mated they build 3 to 5 foot wide haystack nests of vegetation close to shallow marshes. Sandhill cranes migrate in groups with their offspring, and individuals typically have a lifespan of between 18 and 24 years. They are large birds, standing up to four feet tall with a wingspan of nearly 80 inches. Sandhill cranes are omnivorous, feeding on berries, grains, seeds, insects, small rodents, snakes, and lizards, but they do not fish like most wading birds.