{"id":1020,"date":"2010-03-18T20:23:20","date_gmt":"2010-03-19T00:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/?p=1020"},"modified":"2011-02-24T14:24:46","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T18:24:46","slug":"midway-midair-collision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/2010\/03\/18\/midway-midair-collision\/","title":{"rendered":"Midair Collision over Midway!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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All three of the images in this post were created with the handheld Canon 400mm f\/4 IS DO lens and the EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 1\/3 stops off the sand set manually: 1\/1250 sec. at f\/7.1 As always, you can click on each image to see a larger, sharper version.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

My last morning on Midway dawned still and clear.\u00a0Very still.\u00a0 Eerily still.\u00a0 With many types of bird photography wind can be a negative, and the direction is of vital importance.\u00a0 We generally wish for the wind to be from roughly the same direction as the light,\u00a0 east or southeast winds in the morning and west or southwest in the afternoons are generally ideal.\u00a0 If you are facing your subject with the sun at your back the one thing that you do not want is the wind blowing in your face at all.\u00a0 The birds will be landing into the wind, taking off into the wind, and facing into the wind while facing away from the light.\u00a0 In generaly, not good.<\/p>\n

On Midway wind is\u00a0your ally no matter the direction, and the stronger the better.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because the more wind there\u00a0 is,\u00a0 the more albatrosses will be in the air.\u00a0 And since they love to bank it is possible to create good images even when the wind is against the sun.\u00a0And in March the windier\u00a0and warmer it is the more tropicbirds will be in the air courting.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

With strong wings,\u00a0both the Black-footed and Laysan\u00a0Albatrosses\u00a0are quite maneuverable in flight.\u00a0 By\u00a0moving a few\u00a0feathers, they are able to\u00a0change direction very quickly.\u00a0\u00a0As we learned on that last\u00a0morning, they are pretty much dead in the water on still, windless days.\u00a0 They expend a ton of energy just to get in the air and once\u00a0they are airborne they are sort of like a runaway train; they pretty much have only one directon: straight ahead.\u00a0 There were perhaps 8 of us near the\u00a0usual Laysan\u00a0runway but\u00a0photography was not\u00a0very good because the birds\u00a0were taking off in many\u00a0different directions.\u00a0\u00a0 Several of us were following a bird\u00a0flying towards us when WHAM!\u00a0 A bird headed west has\u00a0collided head on with another that was flying east.\u00a0 It sounded as if a car had hit an abutment.\u00a0 The bird that had been heading west missed a wingbeat or two but was able to continue on its way.\u00a0 The bird that had been headed east fell to the ground like a rock.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When it hit the ground, it righted itself and after taking a quick look at it (see the opening image here), pretty much everyone shouted “Broken wing!”\u00a0 With the bird’s left wing drooping and dragging into the sand, it seemed fairly obvious that the diagnosis was accurate.\u00a0\u00a0 But within a minute, the bird seems to be trying to fold its wing.\u00a0 (See the image immediately below.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Same techs as the opening image. As it turned out, our initial diagnosis had been wrong :).<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Within a few minutes, the bird seemed fine and begain testing its wings by flapping them vigorously.\u00a0\u00a0 Minutes after that, it began displaying.\u00a0 Then after posing for vertical portraits (below), it walked off under its own power into the native naupaka bushes\u00a0presumably for a short rest before heading out to sea to feed on small squid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Again, same lens and camera, same techs. Here I got down on my belly to photograph the recovering crash victim.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ngg_shortcode_3_placeholder All three of the images in this post were created with the handheld Canon 400mm f\/4 IS DO lens and the EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 1\/3 stops off the sand set manually: 1\/1250 sec. at f\/7.1 As always, you can click on each image to see a larger, sharper […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[89,8,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-89","category-ipt-reports","category-midway-2010","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}