Show us your cranes, egrets, hamerkops, herons, pelicans and storks...

[Bush dog]

Along the Cuiaba river (Pantanal)

 

This heron was probably tangled in the line of a fisherman and a fish was left hanging by a hook on its chest, when it managed to extricate itself from it.

 

 

 

 

[Bush dog]

The previous heron is a cocoi heron, of course.

 

Wood storck (Rio Mutum, Pantanal)

 

 

[Tom Kellie]

Lake Navaisha Squacco Heron

Photographed at 2:53 pm on 8 February, 2014 at Lake Navaisha, Kenya, using an EOS 1D X camera and an EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II super-telephoto lens.

ISO 100, 1/500 sec., f/2.8, 400mm focal length, handheld Manual exposure.

*****************************************************************************************************

Before taking this portrait, I'd never previously knowingly observed or photographed a Squacco Heron. I say ‘knowingly’ as it's certainly possible I'd seen them but not known what I was seeing.

Not being a birder, I often stumble in recognizing what more experienced eyes would immediately know. That doesn't lessen my pleasure in observing birds.

As a child, my family had a fairly substantial aviary which developed an appreciation for the intelligence of birds. It was a small achievement to finally photograph this beautiful heron.

[Bush dog]

Boat-billed heron (Pantanal)

 

The two first pictures were taken along the Rio Mutum and the third one at Barranco Alto.

[Bush dog]

Rio Claro (Pantanal)

 

The beautiful whistling heron

 

 

Striated heron

 

[Tom Kellie]

Windblown Crowned Cranes

~ Photographed on 28 January, 2015 at 10:23 am in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya with an EOS 1D X camera and an EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II super-telephoto lens.

ISO 160, f/5.6, 1/1600 sec., 400mm focal length, handheld Manual exposure.

***************************************************************************************************

What struck me about this image was the effect of a steady breeze on the head plumage, i.e. the ‘crown’, of these Crowned Cranes. Their feathers are typically neatly arrayed...not here!

They were wading together in the nearly dry Ewaso Nyiro River, where the brisk air from Buffalo Springs across the river was rustling tree foliage and cooling off the heat around us.

[Terry]

This was the day the Little Blue Heron became pelagic. The small heron was searching for his dinner on a rock on the edge of Half Moon Bay in Akumal, Mexico, when a wave caught him unaware. The little blues spend the first year of their lives in white feathers and as they are molting into their adult plumage they appear in patchworks of white and blue.

 

[Terry]

This Little Blue Heron is dry unlike the one I posted above and much lighter in color. He was photographed at Coba, a great Mayan city now in ruins in State of Quintana Roo, Mexico. The little Blue Herons also live in the southeast USA in marshes and estuaries and spend their days stalking the shallow waters for small fish and amphibians.

 

[Tom Kellie]

This Little Blue Heron is dry unlike the one I posted above and much lighter in color. He was photographed at Coba, a great Mayan city now in ruins in State of Quintana Roo, Mexico. The little Blue Herons also live in the southeast USA in marshes and estuaries and spend their days stalking the shallow waters for small fish and amphibians.

 

~ @@Terry

 

What gorgeous color!

That's one beautiful bird.

Thank you for the background concerning where it was photographed.

Tom K.

[Patty]

Great blue heron, Point Lobos, California

 

Brown pelican, Point Lobos, California

[Patty]

Snowy egret, Point Lobos, California

[Tom Kellie]

Snowy egret, Point Lobos, California

 

~ @@Patty

 

Now that's a special shot!

You're making me miss coastal California.

What a great two-fer photograph.

We're fortunate in Safaritalk that you live where you do, as you're able to regularly share such great images.

Thank you!

Tom K.

[Tom Kellie]

Crowned Crane Wings

Photographed at 1:06 pm on 3 May, 2015 in Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya, using an EOS 1D X camera and an EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II super-telephoto lens.

ISO 2500, 1/1600 sec., f/16, 400mm focal length, handheld Manual exposure.

*****************************************************************************************************

In the distance, where no game had been spotted for many minutes, we noticed flashing colors. Several crowned cranes had assumed the guise of whirling dervishes, flailing their wings together.

I'd thought of crowned cranes as being mild birds who quietly went about their business, feeding in grassy areas. Yet everyone has their moments of abandon, even crowned cranes.

[Zubbie15]

A couple of months ago my wife and I were in the San Francisco area, mostly for work but we took a couple of days off and headed down to Pacific Grove. On our way back to SF, there was one stop I had to make - Elkhorn Slough, for it's boat safari: http://www.elkhornslough.com/

We were rather lucky in that the cruise goes out based on low tide, and while we were there low tide was late afternoon, so there was some nice light for photos. There's an amazing concentration of birds there, as well as a lot of Sea Otters (I think the final count for our 90 minutes was over 60 that we saw). We also saw, more relevant to this thread, Brown Pelicans and American White Pelicans, in good numbers. My wife really wanted to get pictures of pelicans in flight, and while it looked like we wouldn't be lucky, some Brown Pelicans obliged just as the sun was setting. I'll share a few photos, and paste a couple of other pictures in the relevant threads.

[Patty]

Sandhill cranes at Bosque del Apache, New Mexico

 

Returning to the roosting pond in the evening

 

Taking off from the icy pond in the morning

 

Mid-day feeding in the fields

[Tom Kellie]

~ @@Patty 

 

Thank you so much for posting these terrific crane images.

 

All of your photos are highly appreciated.

 

Cranes richly deserve every photograph, due to their grace and beauty.

 

I especially enjoy seeing cranes in various settings.

 

Tom K.

[inyathi]

Now that I've worked out that you don't need to go to my Flickr site to view my full sized panoramas you can view them properly here on ST, I decided I had to add the following extraordinary view to this thread click on the photo to view the full sized image, I think this is as long a photo as it's possible to upload to Flickr and probably the longest panorama I successfully created so far.

 

 

Waterbirds at Rigueik in Zakouma National Park in Chad

 

In this view there are saddle-billed, yellow-billed and marabou storks, grey herons, squacco herons, cattle egrets, sacred ibis, great white pelicans, African spoonbill, black-winged stilt, spur-winged geese, juvenile fish eagles and a black kite over the other side of the water there are herds of antelopes, tiang, lelwel hartebeest and Defassa waterbuck as far as I can tell. Those are the species that I have managed to spot in my even larger version and in the original photos from which I created this panorama but there may well be more species that I haven't spotted, you may not be able to find all of them in this version. Though I'm sure I've seen for example greater and lesser flamingos in far larger flocks than this I have never seen such a range of different species in these numbers anywhere else.

Edited May 23, 2020 by inyathi

[deano]

@@inyathi - WOW! Amazing image(s). Thank you for posting...have you printed that one ?

[Tom Kellie]

~ @@inyathi

 

For such a panorama “over-the-top” is the superlative of choice.

I actually laughed aloud when I first saw it.

A birding photography tour de force!

Thank you.

Tom K.

[inyathi]

@@deano I'm guessing you're not being entirely serious about printing it, I don’t normally ever get around printing any of my photos so I hadn’t considered printing any of my other panoramas nevermind this monster, but since you suggested it. Just for curiosity's sake I had brief look into the idea, it was created from 19 photos and I’ve just had a look at the properties for the original version and it’s 21413 x 942 pixels I looked at various websites to get a conversion to cms and was quite amazed that that works out at 566 x 24 cm. It wouldn’t have occured to me that I could ever end up with a panorama that’s over five and half metres long. The version on Flickr is roughly half the size but it’s still so big that Flickr can’t cope with the length and records it as 9999 so I’m not absolutely certain of the dimensions but I measured the height on my screen as it’s displayed on Flickr and it’s 14cms, here on ST it’s only 13cm while the height given on Flickr is 440 pixels which is actually only 11.6cms whatever the actual height is that puts the length at from 2.7 to 3.3 metres. I’m afraid without reducing the height too much I think it may just be a bit too long to print as one image perhaps if I cut it in to 3 or 4 pieces it might work but even then it would require a lot of wall space to hang once framed. Even so I am a litte bit tempted by the idea

 

Here’s a somewhat shorter panorama from my 2014 visit to Zakouma of black-crowned cranes at Rigueik which gives some idea of the numbers that congregate here, in amongst are spur-winged geese and knob-billed ducks, cattle egrets, a pied kingfisher and I’m sure various other birds.

 

[deano]

@@inyathi - I was kidding but I am glad you decided to check it out. I print some of my own stuff at home and am just about to embark on a test of panoramas as my printer can apparently churn out 44 inches (112cm) by 13 inches (33 cm). I use 300 ppi as my rule of thumb but have used much less than that with good results. Much more ppi and I think its pretty pointless with an entry level printer like mine (Epson Artisan 1430) not to mention entry level photography skills! I would definitely be tempted to try and print one of your panoramas if I was you but yes you will need to break it up as much as you can. I think you can recalculate your ppi (or pp - cm) and get something about 10ft or so which would be about 3 prints on my machine and pretty cheap to do after the outlay for printer and ink). I dare say you will be limited by wall space more than anything else...unless you live in an art gallery? Or try printing on canvas that is about 1'' thick and you can "wrap" the image around the side and go without frames. It is quite a modern look though but will save you a few inches in wasted frames and mounts if space really is an issue.

 

I would love to hear how you get on...I am sure there will be a print shop where you are that would be interested in helping you out as I can't imagine they get many requests for big panoramas and they could use yours as advertising.....worth a try.

 

kind regards

 

deano.

Edited February 23, 2016 by deano

[Geoff]

Just for curiosity's sake I had brief look into the idea, it was created from 19 photos and I’ve just had a look at the properties for the original version and it’s 21413 x 942 pixels.

 

 

@@inyathi Rob, If you print those pixels dimensions at say 300 ppi (pixels per inch - some commercial printers prefer 360 ppi) you should get 71.37 inches x 3.14 inches (181 cm x 8 cm)

[inyathi]

Thanks @@Geoff I had intended to reply earlier but I seem to be having serious trouble with my router at the moment at least I keep getting disconnected from the internet. Just in the last few days I’ve started losing my connection and now it’s more off than on so I can’t do much on the Internet at all at the present. Trying to find a solution online which is what I normally do when I have a computer problem isn’t much help when I can’t stay connected for long enough to do anything it’s looking like a may need to buy a new one even though it’s not that old. If I’m trying to put together a post I may be happily connected at the start but then when I come to click post find I’m no longer connected which gets a little frustrating.

 

Going back to my panorama I guess 8 x 181cms could work but if it were properly framed then it would still be around 2 metres in length ideally I think making it just a bit higher than 8cms would be better but then it might no work as one image. Perhaps the answer would be to see if I can workout how to print out a small section of it at that height and see if I’m happy with that, then I might consider getting someone to print it.

 

More photos from Zakouma

 

 

Black crowned Cranes at Rigueik

 

 

Black crowned cranes and cattle egrets at Sourane

Edited December 21, 2018 by inyathi

[Tom Kellie]

~ @@inyathi

 

Never did I imagine that crowned cranes would gather in such numbers.

These two images are extraordinary to one who deems a sighting of three crowned cranes together to be a crowd.

As ever, how little I know. That's why regular enjoyment of Safaritalk posts is educational.

I'm so sorry to hear about your vexing router problems.

We have opposite issues.

My hardware and connection work very well indeed.

Your local Internet service is unhampered by unacknowledged national policies.

Were we only able to give one another the benefits we respectively enjoy.

Thank you for hoping these images. I hope that your Internet issues will soon be satisfactorily resolved.

Tom K.

[Geoff]

Thanks @@Geoff

 

Going back to my panorama I guess 8 x 181cms could work but if it were properly framed then it would still be around 2 metres in length ideally I think making it just a bit higher than 8cms would be better but then it might no work as one image. Perhaps the answer would be to see if I can workout how to print out a small section of it at that height and see if I’m happy with that, then I might consider getting someone to print it.

 

 

@@inyathi Rob, Yes, I agree that it could do with my height. If you're seriously considering a print, ask around the commercial printers. Some might prefer a file at say 720 ppi, then the pano would be 2.5 feet wide and also find out their file preferences. Some might be happy with a .jpg others will want a .tiff and perhaps 16 bit or in different colour spaces.

Then of course it all comes down to cost.

 

Even so It's a fabulous sight when you get to see massive flocks/herds different species.