I took Friday off work, and spent the morning gathering together all of the camera equipment that we'd take. Since we travel in our Chevy Tahoe, storage space isn't an issue. With two shooters, I took all three of my DSLR camera bodies (Canon 7D, 50D, and 400D). Each of us would use a body with a telephoto lens, and the third body would wear a normal-ish walk-around lens all day. I synced the time on all three bodies to be identical so I could accurately sort the resulting images by timestamp and get them all in the right order. I usually shoot in RAW+JPEG, but I configured the cameras to shoot in RAW only this time to save space on the memory cards. We filled all 58GB of memory cards last year, and I didn't want that to happen again. Shooting in JPEG would have made this a non-issue, but when you're shooting into a great sunset or sunrise, you don't always get the right exposure, and I wanted as much latitude as possible for fixing things in post.
- Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS
- Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 IS (v1)
- Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4 OS
- Canon 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5
- Vivitar (Kiron) 24mm f/2
- Asahi/Pentax Super-Takumar 50mm f/1.4
- Tamron 90mm f/2.5 (52B) macro
- Nikon Nikkor 135mm f/2.8 AI
- Asahi/Pentax Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 200mm f/4
- Tele-Vivitar 400mm f/4.5
- ENNA-Munchen Tele-Ennalyt 400mm f/4.5
- Canon 2X teleconverter (v2)
- Kenko 1.4X teleconverter
I brought every memory card & battery I owned, plus two tripods, a monopod, and more bags than I needed. Most of our shooting would be within a few steps of the truck, but the Ft. Kearney State Rec Area bridge involved a mile-long hike, so I made sure I could easily carry everything I needed for that.
Besides the camera gear, I bought plenty of drinks and snacks, since we'd be spending the standard eating hours shooting on the river. We brought dark or camo clothing, since the cranes can be spooked by humans. One of the best accessories for these trips is my DeLorme Nebraska Atlas & Gazetteer, which shows every dirt road in the state, making navigation easy even when the smart phone is acting up.
I loaded the Google MyTracks app on my cell phone so that I could track our route all day. Every time we stopped to take photos, I put marked a waypoint on the app that was named after the first image from that location. This way, I can determine later where on the map all the good photo spots are located.
We left Lincoln around 2pm Friday and stopped for an early, fast food dinner in Grand Island. We left there around 4pm and spent most of the rest of the day on county roads so we could stop anywhere we wanted to shoot cranes from the shoulder. As usual, we didn't see a huge number of cranes near G.I. By 6pm, storm clouds started rolling in, and we headed west on I-80 to get out from under them, but not before enjoying the birds silhouetted against the orange clouds.
Our standard road-cruising configuration has me in the driver seat (obviously) with my bag of gear sitting open and ready to go in the front passenger seat. Noelle sits in the back seat with her bag of gear. This allows both of us to shoot out the windows on either side of the truck without any obstructions. If a third person were to join us, they and Noelle would have been in each other's way much of the time, especially since the rear side windows only roll half way down. Stupid DOT safety standards...
The Canon 70-300mm lens that my daughter was using on her Canon 50D body had been acting up on her, so I let her use my Canon 70-200/2.8IS + 2X teleconverter (effectively a 140-400mm f/5.6 lens) while I used the old, manual-focus Tele-Ennalyt 400mm f/4.5 lens that I'd picked up at a garage sale last summer. Love means letting your little girl use the $2500 lens while you use the $25 lens. We did switch back later that evening.
Thousands of cranes prepare to land on the river |
Entry to the SRA requires a state park permit, which is $5 per day or $23 per year (or thereabouts). The trail head leading to the old rail bridge is at the eastern end of the eastern road loop. The parking lot was full when we arrived, I wasn't surprised to find scores of people gathered on the bridge.
Deer mingle with cranes long after sunset |
Bird watchers gather on the Ft. Kearney bridge |
The rain had stopped by morning. Outside the motel, we could see the moon through the hazy clouds. However, as soon as we hit the interstate (closer to the river), fog dropped our visibility to about 50 yards. It's a good thing I knew where we were going! We got to our spot (Elm Island Rd on the bank of the Platte River) about 20 minutes before sunrise, which is later than I wanted, but it worked out OK, because the dense fog kept the cranes on the river longer than normal. With clear skies, I prefer to be in place and ready to shoot at least 30 minutes before sunrise. The fog was likely caused by high humidity from the night's rain combined with the warmer temperatures.
About 30 minutes after sunrise, we could finally start making out the cranes on the sand bars in the river. That's when the fun began. As the first of the cranes took flight to head out to the corn fields, we could just barely make out their shapes against the fog. This resulted in some of my favorite photos from the whole trip. The fog steadily cleared as the morning progressed, and we finally left about two hours after sunrise. The whole time we were there, only one other car stopped to watch cranes (a friendly, older gentleman from Kearney). There were, however, several local residents that flew down the road rather fast, underscoring why it's important to not block the road when bird watching.
After leaving Rowe, we wandered more county roads in that area for a couple hours before finally jumping back on I-80 to head home around 1pm. It was a fun outing, even without any sunset photos.
More photos from our trip can be seen on the Prairie Rim Images gallery site.
The paths we traveled, marked with a pin everywhere we stopped to take pictures, are seen below. First is Friday evening's route, followed by Saturday morning's route. For some reason, Google isn't displaying the entire route, so you'll have to zoom out one step to see the whole thing.
View Friday evening's route in a larger map
View Saturday morning's route in a larger map
After four years of shooting Sandhill Cranes, we'll probably try to do something different next year. If the stars align, we'll go shoot Bald Eagles on the Mississippi River. We might also try to find an active Prairie Chicken lek near Beatrice or Grand Island. If you've got any suggestions on good wildlife photography opportunities near Lincoln, please share them in the comments below!
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