For Wings on Wednesday: If you are trying to capture a Sandhill Crane taking off, this is what you look for…the bird stretches in the direction of take off, and assumes what can only be called an intent posture. Then…

the head drops and you might be fooled into thinking the bird has thought better of it…but…

the next second, with run and a flapping of those huge wings, the bird is in the air. These three shots were taken with a small digital camera behind the eyepiece of a ZEISS DiaScope spotting scope, at the equivalent field of view of about 1800mm on a conventional full frame DSLR so tracking the bird was not easy. The final shot is at the limits of the auto focus of the camera through the scope.

Canon SD4000IS and ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. Kids and Pets mode for higher shutter speeds (1/1000th) which pushed the ISO up to 160. An effective aperture of about f5.0.

Processed for clarity and sharpness in Lightroom.

And here, from the same morning, is the video that shows a similar sequence. Also taken with the SD4000IS behind the eyepiece of the ZEISS DiaScope. You can see some heat shimmer in the air, even though this was just after dawn. The rapidly warming water gives off a lot of vapor in the dry upland desert air.