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| Whitetail Herd In Snowstorm |
Just a short time ago we were plunged into the depth
of winter with deep snow and bitter cold. This changed quickly;
however, as we saw in the Ice-Out post. While snow still remained on the
ground in most places, life was much easier for the deer and turkeys as
they could now travel about easily looking for food.
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| Alert Gobbler |
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| Travel Was Easy |
Three days later, there was even less snow in the
spot the turkeys were photographed and deer liked to stand there,
basking in the rays of the afternoon sun.
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| Doe Basking In Late Winter Sun |
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| Doe Grooming Fawn |
There was even less snow by yesterday morning and I
photographed a buck, that was a small spike last fall, and some does
feeding in a neighbor's rye field.
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| Last Year's Spike |
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| Deer Pause From Grazing In Rye |
After a chilly start, yesterday turned into a balmy
day that reached the mid 60s. This made my thoughts turn to the coming
spring waterfowl migration and hopefully a trip or two to Middle Creek
Wildlife Management Area. If the current weather pattern does not
change, the peak of the snow geese and tundra swan migration should be
much earlier than in the past two years.
All photos were taken with the Canon 7D MK II. The 24-105mm
IS
L lens was used for the first photo and the 70-200mm 2.8 L IS II was
used for the remainder. I love the sharpness of the new Canon 100-400mm
IS II, and have been using it a lot this winter, but I have had problems
with it (or the camera it is mounted on) locking up (auto-focus stops
and the IS doesn't work). Seldom a day goes by without this happening
at least once. Strangely it seems to do it more often with the 7D MK
II, but it does it occasionally with the 5D MK III, the 70D, and the
original 7D. Sometimes simply moving the focusing ring a bit will
restore function, while other times re-seating the lens will do the
trick, but sometimes the battery must be removed and re-inserted. I
returned the lens and the 7D MK II to Canon at the end of December, and
they changed the focus assembly and other parts and calibrated the
camera with the lens, but the problem was still there. I sent the lens
back at the beginning of the week and Canon is currently servicing it so
I could not use it for the photos in today's post and the 70-200mm is
filling in as the telephoto lens to use when photographing from the vehicle until it gets back. Hopefully they will find the problem this
time
Originally published at
Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.
