photoartflightSandhill Crane Panoramas From Lake Woodruff NWR
These are from a trip a couple of years ago to Lake Woodruff NWR. It is located in Volusia County, Florida near the community of DeLeon Springs. It is a very interesting NWR to visit and is surprisingly empty of visitors except for the Wildlife. If you see a few groups of visitors there it is not the norm. Many times you are there almost completely by yourself which because of the size it is a little strange feeling. The famed St Johns River forms the western boundary of the 22,000-acre refuge. The refuge contains a wide variety of habitats. Among them are marshes, swamps, creeks, hammocks and uplands. One of my favorite birds besides Bald Eagles are Sandhill Cranes which seem to really like this Refuge. On this day there were quite a few Sandhill Cranes roaming around the ponds close to the entrance. It is very strange to have a bird that large walk right up to you to check you out. Many times you are just a few feet from them. On previous visits they were more wary and did not get close. I was just using a Canon 7D with a 300mm lens for wildlife and my iP11 Pro for landscapes. The Featured Image is a 7 horizontal images panorama stacked vertically to get the whole Crane in. When shooting panoramas of slowly moving birds foraging you still have to shoot the sequence very quickly to have the images line up correctly without having to do a lot of touch-ups on the overlaps.
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Amazing to get so close, beautiful birds!
Yes! We were surprised they would walk right up to you to check us out! The first few times it was a little intimidating but was a fun NWR to photograph in. Especially since we only saw a couple of other people walking around this large refuge.
To see them up close and calling like that must have been a thrill. 🙂
Yes! It was a Great day for photographing Sandhill Cranes!
Gorgeous, big birds, great shots, Reed!!
Thanks Donna! They were certainly fun to photograph! Plus they were so close almost all my images of them had to be multi-image panoramas! Except for the ones or groups in flight! Definitely a fun photo day!
Love the sounds they make, similar to my chickens but more trilly.
They do make quite a bit of noise! And are fun to walk amongst them and photograph them close up!
Enjoyed seeing your Sandhill Cranes!
Thanks so much Greta! They are fun to walk around & photograph!
Great detail in that last feather shot!
Thanks! It was a fun day to photograph them! Especially that closeup!