The
late winter--early spring waterfowl migration is now underway and and
large numbers of Snow Geese were at Middle Creek Wildlife Management
Area near Lancaster, PA.when I arrived on Wednesday afternoon. Activity
was exceptional on both Wednesday and Thursday and it was easy to see
large numbers of geese along the tour road at the north end of the lake.
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| Snow Geese Feed Along Tour Road: Canon 70D-Canon 18-135mm STM@50mm-ISO 200-1/1600sec. f8.0 |
The lake and potholes are still mostly ice covered
and the birds are roosting on the ice at night. I captured a mixed
flock of Tundra Swans, Snow Geese and Canada Geese roosting on the ice
at dawn on Thursday, in the area where Hopeland Road passes by the edge
of the lake.
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| Ice Roosting: Canon 70D-Canon 18-135mm STM@27mm-ISO 400-1/400sec. f8.0 |
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| Canada Geese-Snow Geese Ice Roosting: Panasonic GH4-Still capture from video-Canon 100-400mm lens |
The Pennsylvania Game Commission reported
that approximately 1,800 tundra swans were present on March 19th and
they provided excellent photo opportunities as well. It is challenging
to capture exceptional images of birds in flight, but I mostly
concentrated on video and did not get a lot of good stills.
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| Tundra Swans: Canon 7DMKII-Canon 100-400mm L IS II @ 400mm-ISO 200-1/2500sec. f 5.6 |
It
is a tremendous spectacle when an entire flock takes flight. As is
often the case, I was shooting video when the most dramatic moments
occurred, but I did capture a few stills.
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| Snow Geese Erupt: Canon 70D-Canon 18-135mm STM@135mm-ISO 200-1/2500sec. f8.0 |
I also worked a bit on getting some close-up shots of geese in flight or as they were landing.
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| Snow Goose In Flight: Canon 7DMKII-Canon 100-400mm L IS II @ 371mm-ISO 200-1/2500sec. f 5.6 |
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| Snow Goose Landing: Canon 7DMKII-Canon 100-400mm L IS II @ 400mm-ISO 200-1/2500sec. f 5.6 |
Wednesday and Thursday were beautiful late winter days, but snow was in the forecast for Friday and I was not certain I would travel to the lake if snow was falling on Friday morning. As it turned out it was just starting to snow at dawn so I did go, but that story is for another day.
Originally published at
Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.
