Spring is a dramatic and beautiful time of year and my primary focus at this point is documenting turkey activity and the emerging leaves and flowers. Later my attention will shift more toward the whitetail deer as antlers increase in size and the new fawns are born.
Antler growth has been very slow until recemntly, but the older bucks have made a noticeable gain in antler size in the past week.
The Buck's Antlers Develop
Deer are not their most photogenic at this time as the winter coat has a faded, ragged appearance and a lot of the hair is loose and falling out. By late May or early June, the winter coat will be completely replaced by the beautiful, red, summer coat.
The does are pregnant and their abdomens will grow larger as spring progresses. Most fawns in this area will be born in late May though mid-June.
Original content posted at http://pawildlifephotographer.blogspot.com/ If this content appears elsewhere without being credited to Willard Hill or Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer, it is stolen content.
Original content posted at http://pawildlifephotographer.blogspot.com/ If this content appears elsewhere without being credited to Willard Hill or Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer, it is stolen content.
I have spent about 99% of my mornings in the past few weeks photographing the Eastern Wild Turkey during their mating season. The gobblers have now gone from spending most of their time in bachelor groups to usually being seen with a flock of hens in the mornings, although I still often see them without the hens in the evenings. Mornings are more productive for good photo opportunities as the birds are much more likely to strut and gobble. Later in the spring, it will become more common to see the birds strutting in the evening.
On Wednesday morning I photographed and filmed a group of mature birds gobblers strutting and gobbling directly in front of me as the first faint rays of the early morning sun casting a golden glow over the meadow.
Mature Gobblers Strutting
Suddenly I looked to the left and noticed another gobbler standing by a solitary hen that was lying on the ground. It is quite rare to see this, and I began filming them with the Canon XL-H1 video camera. I let it run unattended while I took a series of stills of the action. As luck would have it the sun went behind a thin veil of clouds during the entire time that the following action took place. The photos from this series were not as good as those of the gobblers as the birds were further away and the increased distance combined with the murky light, resulted in the photos not being as dramatic and sharp as I would have liked.
Standing Guard
Soon, he walked to the hen and stood on her back. This continued for at least ten minutes.
Standing On Her Back For Over Ten Minutes
During this time I frantically took still photos and periodically checked to see the the camcorder was working correctly, at one point putting the 70-200mm f2.8 lens on it, which with the EF adapter gave me an effective focal length of over 1400mm. This should yield dramatic footage.
Finally the birds completed mating, with the actual process only taking a short time. I have photographed turkeys since 1974 and do not recall having seen or photographed this before.
Mating
With mating completed, the gobbler jumped away and the birds ran about, circling each other and then left the meadow.
With Mating Completed, The Gobbler Leaves
I have found that observing and photographing nature is one of the most rewarding experiences in life. If one is in a hunting type situation they may observe wildlife behavior to a certain extent, especially of species they are not hunting on that particular day, but they do not get to witness some of the most interesting aspects of wildlife behavior as their attention is devoted to setting up a successful shot. Often the animal is either shot at or taken before anything especially noteworthy happens.
Original content posted at http://pawildlifephotographer.blogspot.com/ If this content appears elsewhere without being credited to Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer or Willard Hill, it is stolen content.
Mature Eastern Wild Turkey Gobbler Strutting
The Eastern Wild Turkey is Pennsylvania's largest game bird and in fact is actually classified as a big game animal by the Pennsylvania Game Commission. While they are impressive birds at any time of year, they are especially striking in appearance during their mating season, which occurs in the spring.
Gobbling In Unison
Mature males, known as gobblers, may gobble at any time of year, but do it most often during the mating season, to attract hens or challenge other males. The birds travel in bachelor groups most of the year, although these groups may mix with flocks of hens and young turkeys at times. They are still likely to be found in these groups during late winter and early spring, but later on are more likely to be found alone with hens as the peak of the actual mating activity occurs.
I have featured photographs from the recent trip to Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area during the last several posts and during that time I have been working on a short film dealing with the trip.
Most of the clips were taken with the Canon 7D and a variety of Canon lenses. The film begins with sunrise at Middle Creek Lake. This segment was shot with the 28-135mmF3.5 IS EF. Other lenses used were the 500mmF4 IS with 2x extender, the 100-400mmF5.6 IS L, and the 17-40mmF4 L. A few of the clips were filmed in previous years but included here to make the story more complete and interesting. These were recorded with the Canon XL-H1 camcorder. The first example is tundra swans swimming in the lake. We only saw a few of these birds flying at long distance this year. The most notable is the eagle in the closing shot which was taken in 2009 and is at extreme distance. The 100-400mm was used with an EF adapter, which yields an effective focal length of 2,880mm when mounted on the XL-H1. This same rig was also used this year to record two close-up clips of ring-necked Ducks and one clip of flying snow geese, in which case the normal lens was used which has an effective focal length of approximately 40mm-780mm.
The XL-H1wins hands down against the 7D when it comes to ease of use and versatility (as a video camera) for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it has a decent shotgun microphone as standard equipment and much better audio controls. In addition one needs only the standard 20x zoom lens to go from moderate wide-angle to extreme telephoto, and it has decent auto-focus, while the 7D does not in video mode. On top of that it becomes a formidable long range wildlife filming tool when the 35mm lenses are mounted by using the EF adapter. This results in a 7.2 magnification factor.
At face value it would seem that there is little point in using the 7D for wildlife filming, but that is not the case. For one thing there is just something about the look of its' picture. Another is the ability to record to flash media instead of videotape, although this will soon be a moot point as it will not be long until tape based cameras will be gone from the market place.
Cost is also an important consideration. If one does not already have a wide array of lenses, it is more expensive to put together a DSLR based outfit that will cover the focal ranges that most camcorders do with just one lens. The situation is somewhat different; however, if you already own a battery of lenses, or if your primary purpose for buying the camera is for still use, in which case the video function is a bonus feature. The bottom line is that it gives one the ability to shoot high quality video without having to invest in a prosumer camcorder, although one pays a certain price in ease of use.
I for one am excited about the trend and find myself using the 7D more and more for serious filming. I hope the day arrives that there is no need to own a dedicated video camera. I think it is likely that most if not all still cameras will soon have the ability to shoot video and one must bear in mind that things should only get better, with higher resolution, a usable auto-focus function, manual audio control, and more. We are truly living through a revolution in the video world.
