Migration (White Stork)

Getting ready to migrate - Ciconia ciconia (common name: White stork)

It is the end of summer and all migratory birds are making their final preparations for the long trip to their winter homes. This process is even more important for young birds which were born during the summer and will make this trip for the first time. If you watch the flock closely you will notice immediately that it is the youngest birds which try their ability to fly most of the time. I happened to be close to a flock of white storks and watched this for several hours. The young birds would fly high, make a couple of large circles and then come down again. After resting for an hour or so they took off again and made a second trial. Each consecutive flight seemed to last a little bit longer than the previous one. I used a zoom lens since I wanted a long telephoto to capture the animals in flight but was unsure how close they might get to the camera when landing, which called for a flexible focal length. One more reason for choosing this particular zoom lens is that it is really fast in its auto focus mode - a very welcomed feature for this kind of photos. I chose a bird which had been testing its wings on the ground by extending them a couple of times. Then it took off and I managed to take some good shots on its way up. After five minutes it started  descending so I got ready. I knew it would land somewhere near the rest of the flock but this meant a couple of acres - at least. Fortunately, it didn't land on the other side of the field since there were some trees in between, but chose to land on the foreground. I kept on panning, focusing and shooting while zooming. In the end it landed and folded its wings like a great performer. I was almost sure that some of the photos would turn out good and I was happy to see that almost half of them were "keepers". Needless to say, I shot more than 100 photos during those 5 minutes.

Photos by George J. Reclos

Shooting Data:

1. Camera: Nikon D2X
Lens: Nikkor AF 80-200 mm f/2.8 ED D @ 200 mm.
Sensitivity: ISO 100
Shutter speed - aperture: 1/1250 sec - f/5, Aperture priority mode
Flash: SB-800 in i-TTL mode
Image: JPEG edited in Photoshop CS2, levels adjusted, smart sharpening added and resized.

2. Camera: Nikon D2X
Lens: Nikkor AF 80-200 mm f/2.8 ED D @ 200 mm.
Sensitivity: ISO 100
Shutter speed - aperture: 1/800 sec - f/5, Aperture priority mode
Flash: SB-800 in i-TTL mode
Image: JPEG edited in Photoshop CS2, levels adjusted, smart sharpening added and resized.

3. Camera: Nikon D2X
Lens: Nikkor AF 80-200 mm f/2.8 ED D @ 145 mm.
Sensitivity: ISO 100
Shutter speed - aperture: 1/160 sec - f/11, Aperture priority mode
Flash: SB-800 in i-TTL mode
Image: JPEG edited in Photoshop CS2, levels adjusted, smart sharpening added and resized.

4. Camera: Nikon D2X
Lens: Nikkor AF 80-200 mm f/2.8 ED D @ 145 mm.
Sensitivity: ISO 100
Shutter speed - aperture: 1/180 sec - f/11, Aperture priority mode
Flash: SB-800 in i-TTL mode
Image: JPEG edited in Photoshop CS2, levels adjusted, smart sharpening added and resized.