Sandhill cranes courting and doing something else (hide your eyes)

When I'm out birding and see birds or animals of interest, I generally just start taking pictures, especially if it looks like the composition is good. Many times I'm not really sure how the pictures came out until I get home as the LCD screen on the back of my camera is tiny at 3 inches square. That's just too small in most cases to be useful in determining the quality of the outcome. There is a chance I may be able to tell if the picture of the animal/bird is in focus, but little else. I was out birding the other day and a perfect event occured: a small flock of sandhill cranes flew in just across the river from me. I was able to get pictures of them in flight and landing in the water, but something was wrong with my camera setup. I wasn't able to adjust the shutter speed high enough for some reason. I was using the teleconverter and knew it took away two stops of light, (not allowing as much light on the sensor,) but what I didn't know was that it affected the shutter speed. The pictures of the cranes were blurry and I missed an excellent group of shots. Frustrated, I decided to remove the teleconverter from the camera and the lens which is not the easiest thing to do in the field as there isn't any place to set the camera down.  

Luckily, the cranes were occupied with something else, but it wasn't until I got home that I knew what. While uploading the pictures to my photography software from the SD card, I starting culling the images and deleting the ones that were out of focus. Once this process was completed, I started clicking through the images. There, to my surprise, were two sandhill cranes courting and then mating, wow! I had noticed the most peculiar thing as this one crane kept picking up branches and other impediments off the ground with its beak, and then flipping them up in the air. A most bizarre behavior. I was laughing watching the crane do this and he repeated the behavior over and over. I just kept taking pictures, but at home you can clearly see that one crane is courting the other as their feathers are up and then in a later photo the cranes are mating. There are too many sets of wings in the last picture, and the female crane is almost entirely covered by the male.  

FYI: Sandhill cranes mate for life and lay two eggs that incubate for about a month. Both parents take turns sitting on the eggs.  The baby sandhill cranes are called 'colts' because of their long, strong legs.









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