Black-Crowned Night Heron

PrescottPhotog

Hi Everyone,

Well I haven't posted in a while so I have some catching up to do.

Over the last few days I noticed some birds I have never seen in our area. There were about 8 of them and they would bolt if I got within a couple hundred yards of the leafy tree they were hanging out in. When I did get close they would bolt from the leafy tree (where I couldn't make them out) to an old dead tree way out on the lake, to far to photo.

So Sunday I went about a mile out of the way and snuck up on them from behind through the woods, tall grass and cat tails. I had to crawl about the last 40 yards through the grass and weeds so they wouldn't see me and I was still a good distance because the dead tree is right out in the middle of nowhere.. but I made it with my 500 and 1.4 TC and tripod in tow.

It threatened rain off and on all day, cloudy and lightening.. then sunny and bright so it was a tough day to photo as you can see from the background in the photos.

They wouldn't move from the dead tree so I just sat there and snapped away. You can see from the first shot that they thought I was there (one is cutting me in two with his stare) but I was in my camo gear and in the tall grass and weeds. So here is my first posting in a while.

#1

#2

#4

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

ShepsMom

Chris, good shots, did you do some noise reduction on the shots? I can see something has been done and noise came to mind first. Good shooting!

PrescottPhotog

ShepsMom wrote:

Chris, good shots, did you do some noise reduction on the shots? I can see something has been done and noise came to mind first. Good shooting!

Hi Marina,

I was shooting with my 500 so there wasn't much done to any of the photos except some exposure and shadow work. I kept going back to the RAW file because I kept wondering about the greenish yellow feather color on their underside and around their beaks (which I couldn't see on my LCD in the field) but it was there just as shot. I did a search on Google and some photos had the white belly but most had the greenish face and underbelly. The description said their bills were dark black but none of these had black bills, they were almost a bright silver.

No, not much noise in the photos but on a couple I really had to boost the exposure because it got pretty dark at times even though I was shooting at +2/3 exposure and 400 ISO. With the 1.4 TC wide open I could only get f5.6. The sun would come out blazing and then back to dark clouds with the monsoon threatening. You can see from the background of each photo, from bright blue to dull gray, it was an on and off day.

I also have to crop them quite a bit because I was shooting through a bunch of branches and I couldn't move any closer or I would have been out in the open.

I read that the BCNH are the most abundant Heron in America and interact with all other birds but I have never seen this type of Heron here in all the years I have been shooting and then 8 showed up and they stayed way off by themselves. They never moved from the two trees they hung out in, one very leafy tree where you couldn't see them and then when spooked by a hiker they moved to the old dead tree. In 3 days I never saw them fly any further than those two trees.

raptorcaptor

Nice work chris! I like #4 best with the white background.

Shasoc

Good job. You got some very nice poses.

dbaker1221

excellent captures