Collaring Mule Deer

 A little over a week ago Ken and I had the opportunity to attend a mule deer collaring operation that was a joint effort between WGF, UW and TNC. I was given permission to photograph the event and ended up with a large number of images from the day. I should have put them in chronological order but I always seem to forget before I upload them and it is difficult to rearrange them once they are in the post!

The goal of the project is to track migration and habits of a large number of female mule deer along the Absaroka and Beartooth Mountain Fronts for the next two years to establish patterns. At the end of 24 months the collars will automatically fall off. They also have a break-away in case they would get snagged on something in the meantime. The collars will transmit coordinates several times a day so the animals can be tracked in real time.

While the researchers had the animals captive and lightly sedated, they also collected other data such as blood samples, pregnancy status, samples of scat, temperature and weight. Before release, the deer were spray painted with a bright orange spot on their head so they wouldn't accidentally be netted a second time by the capture crew.

 In the image above, the animals are gently lowered to the ground by the helicopter crew. Although I didn't get to witness the actual moment of capture of any of the animals, it was really amazing to watch the professionalism of those in the chopper as they went about the delicate maneuverings.

 In most cases the animals were brought in two by two but every now and then they arrived with a single deer. Even though the animals had their eyes covered, you know they had to be thinking WTH!

The moment of release seemed to be the time of biggest danger for the researchers. As soon as the animals were out of the restraints they were up and out of there, often with legs flying. 

The Main Event

 The goal of our trip to Nebraska was to see sandhill cranes and see them we did! It is almost impossible to describe the overwhelming sight and sound of so many birds in one place. It was everything I hoped for and more.

During the day the big birds spent most of their time in the corn fields cleaning up leftovers from the harvest. It seemed like every field we saw had hundreds of cranes busy fueling up for the trip north. And those fields that didn't have cranes had snow geese by the thousands.

 But the real treat of the trip was the ability to spend time two evenings and one morning in a blind on the Platte River watching the cranes and the geese come in to settle on the sandbars. The only problem was that although the sights were amazing, the photography was challenged, at best. By the time the birds arrived the sky was usually so dark that I was shooting wide open at 3200 ISO and still getting blurry shots.

 The first evening we were in the blind we had one of the most intense, colorful sunsets I have ever seen in my life. There was no need to saturate any of these images - what you see is what I saw!

 The cranes waited until the last light to start making their way to the sandbars in front of the blind. It had been a beautiful day and I think they knew that was about to change. The following day was cold, wet and windy; not much fun for flying.

This shot shows the cranes darkening the sky as they come in to land. The first evening I ended up with almost no usable shots of cranes from the blind but it was still worth the time and effort to witness the spectacle.

 The photo above is from the second evening. A few cranes came in a little earlier and I was able to get some shots of them settling in for the night.

My favorite shots from the trip are of cranes in flight. These last few were all taken on the cold second day. The light was grey but the birds were beautiful!

Goosed!

The goal of our recent trip to Nebraska was to view migrating sandhill cranes. We were thrilled to see and hear thousands of the large birds but we were also amazed by the sighting of what was  almost certainly more than a million geese. 

We started seeing large numbers of geese overhead almost as soon as the interstate began following the Platte River in Nebraska. The streams looked like undulating lines of skywriting overhead that went on for mile after mile after mile. At first we assumed the birds were Canada Geese but a closer look showed that they were primarily Snow Geese. Over the course of the next five days we saw some Canadas and a few White Fronts but the overwhelming majority of birds were the white and black Snow Geese.

 The birds tended to travel or feed in the corn fields with the sandhill cranes during the day and then bunk in to small lakes or on the sand bars in the Platte River during the nighttime hours.

 There were times when the sky was totally black with snow geese. The photo above looks like an insect hatch. It is pretty amazing to think that each one of those specks is a 5-6 pound bird!

The two color variations of snow geese can be seen in this last photo.