Unruly Flock. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A somewhat disorganized flock of lesser sandhill cranes in flight.
Over the time that I’ve photographed birds I have gradually become more aware of the personalities of different species and even different subgroups. For example, the sound of one goose may be lower in pitch than another, one sort of egret is less tolerant of humans than another, the way cranes flock is quite different from geese, and so on. Learning about these differences — and I’m still far from being an expert! — is both fascinating and useful. For example, I can more accurately recognize types of birds based on how a flock behaves, an so on.
Sandhill cranes have idiomatic behaviors that differentiate them from other flocking birds such as geese and ibises. The group size is one element — I’ve never seen them airborne in numbers approaching those of big flocks of geese. The organization of flocks in flight is much “looser” than that of geese. There is usually no traditional “V” pattern, and they sometimes give the appearance of coming close to colliding with one another. They also look around a lot in flight — somewhere I have a photograph that includes one with it head twisted around to look straight up! They don’t like flying directly over photographers, and will usually divert to one side or the other.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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