Someday I hope to go to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico to see and photograph the dramatic flocks of Sandhill Cranes and Geese that winter at the refuge, and that photographers from all over the world travel to photograph in November of each year.

But in keeping with my theme of searching out interesting wildlife locally to photograph, this past week I was able to photograph both of these birds at the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Delta, British Columbia, while on a great photo tour with Aaron Baggenstos of Aaron’s Photo Tours.  Certainly not the large number of birds that you would see at Bosque del Apache, but still wonderful to see.

The picture at the top of this post is of part of a flock of Sandhill Cranes that were flying above the refuge.  Unfortunately, the late afternoon light wasn’t great and the photo didn’t have great detail of the birds, so when I processed the picture in Adobe Lightroom I decided to make the picture a silhouette, and rather than just doing black and white, I used a cyanotype tint to give it more of a bluish foggy look.  So yes, not exactly what it looked like that day at the refuge, but a chance to be a little bit creative.

The picture below highlights one of my favorite moments at the bird sanctuary – a group of four Sandhill Cranes came strolling down the path that we were on and walked right past us as we photographed them!

Finally, the picture below is a close-up of one of the cranes that was wandering through the refuge.  I love the red patch on the crane’s faces!  Definitely a beautiful bird.