Hooded Merganser in Flight

Last December, I had the pleasure of leading my annual "Better than Bosque Workshop," and it truly lived up to its name. We were having an incredible morning, immersed in the beauty of Wood Ducks as they gracefully navigated the ponds, their vibrant plumage perfectly mirrored in the water. The autumn colours, courtesy of the surrounding trees, added an extra layer of magic to the reflections.

Out of nowhere, a Hooded Merganser appeared! It executed a rapid, almost comical "flip-flop" maneuver, quickly losing altitude right in front of us. Talk about being in the right place at the right time! I was fortunate to fire off a few frames, and I'm particularly fond of this one. The autumn colours of a sycamore tree in the background perfectly complement the bird, creating a stunning backdrop.

Hooded Mergansers (Lophodytes cucullatus) are truly distinctive ducks, known for their striking crests. Males, especially, are easily identified by their large, fan-shaped white crest bordered in black, which they can raise or lower depending on their mood or display. These agile divers are built for speed underwater, using their strong feet to propel themselves as they pursue small fish, crustaceans, and aquatic insects. Unlike many other ducks, they have a slender, serrated bill, perfectly adapted for grasping slippery prey. You'll often find them in wooded ponds, swamps, and slow-moving rivers across North America, especially during migration and in winter. Their sudden appearances and energetic movements make them a thrilling sight for any birdwatcher or photographer!

Join me in New Mexico this December for the five-day Better Than Bosque Workshop; only two spots remain available.

Hooded Merganser Top-side Flight (Lophodytes cucullatus, Harle couronné, Serreta capuchona, HOME) from my Better than Bosque workshop . Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds. Sony a9 III Mirrorless camera & Sony FE 600mm f/4 G Master OSS Lens with Sony FE 2X Teleconverter @1,200mm ISO 4,000, f/8 @ 1/5,000s. Manual exposure. Full frame image.

Coyote Bosque del Apache

A lone Coyote photographed during my Best of Bosque Workshop in New Mexico. We have had some pretty amazing encounters with Coyotes over the years. Once I realized that this Coyote was headed down a dirt road our way, we slowly crouched and waited for its close approach; we were lucky that it chose the edge of a clearing to pause for photos.

A couple of spots remain for my Dec. 5-9, 2024, Best of Bosque Workshop. Join me and my small group of six photographers for five full days of photography in and around Bosque del Apache.

Coyote (Canis latrans) from my Best of Bosque workshop. Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio, New Mexico, USA. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds. Sony a1 Mirrorless camera & Sony FE 600mm f/4 G Master OSS Lens with Sony FE 2X Teleconverter @1,200mm ISO 2,500, f/8 @ 1/500s Manual exposure. Sony animal eye auto-focus. Full Frame image.

Peek-a-Boo Sandhill Crane

This is an image of a Sandhill Crane landing in a cornfield midway through my five-day workshop in New Mexico on December 7. So many Cranes landed in the freshly cut corn that it was hard to isolate a single subject in the frame. We worked our way to the outside edge of the activity and worked on the birds outside the circling flight path, which limited the number of birds in the background.

Peek-a-Boo Sandhill Crane Landing in Golden Light (Grus canadenis, Grue du Canada, SACR) from my Better than Bosque workshop. Bernardo Wildlife Area, Bernardo, New Mexico, USA. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds. Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless camera & Sony FE 600mm f/4 G Master OSS Lens with Sony FE 2X Teleconverter @1,200mm ISO 8,000, f/8 @ 1/5,000s Manual exposure. Full frame image.

Sandhill Crane Landing above Autumn Cottonwood Foliage in Golden Light

CRANES ARE BIRDS OF SUPERLATIVES. They are one of the oldest groups of birds, dating back to the Paleocene, some 60 million years ago. They are also long-lived, with captive cranes surviving into their seventies and eighties. They are the tallest flying birds; some species stand up to 1.8m (6ft) high!

Sandhill Crane Landing above Autumn Cottonwood Foliage in Golden Light (Grus canadenis, Grue du Canada, SACR) from my Better than Bosque workshop. Bernardo Wildlife Area, Bernardo, New Mexico, USA. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds. Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless camera & Sony FE 600mm f/4 G Master OSS Lens with Sony FE 2X Teleconverter @1,200mm ISO 1,600, f/8 @ 1/5,000s Manual exposure. Full frame image.

Snow Goose (dark morph, or blue goose) Landing in Golden Light

Here is another magical memory from last December’s Best of Bosque Workshop in New Mexico. Although the wind direction was wrong, some geese circled on the final approach, and the wind shifted in our favour as the light got sweet - a reward for our patience!

Snow Goose (dark morph, or blue goose) Landing in Golden Light (Chen Caerulescens, Oie des Neiges, SNGO) from my Better than Bosque workshop last Dec. Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio, New Mexico, USA. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds. Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless camera & Sony FE 600mm f/4 G Master OSS Lens with Sony FE 2X Teleconverter @1,200mm ISO 2,000, f/8 @ 1/5,000s Manual exposure. Full Frame image top to bottom - cropped left side to 4x5 aspect ratio.

Sandhill Crane landing in a dust storm

The last day of my Better than Bosque Workshop in New Mexico last December was overcast and extremely windy. Thousands of Sandhill Cranes landed before us as the afternoon progressed, making an incredible chorus of their rolling, trumpeting calls. As they foraged for freshly cut corn and preened, they disturbed quite a lot of dust, which acted as an ethereal diffuser at ground level. During the last few minutes of light, the sun tried to appear through the clearing cloud cover in the west; much like smoke, dust filters out part of the light spectrum and changes the colour temperature of the light. I love the resulting warm light and painterly quality of this image.

Sandhill Crane landing in duststorm (Grus canadenis, Grue du Canada, SACR) from my Better than Bosque workshop. Ladd S. Gordon Wildlife Management Area, New Mexico, USA. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds. Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless camera & Sony FE 600mm f/4 G Master OSS Lens with Sony FE 2X Teleconverter @1,200mm ISO 12,800, f/8 @ 1/5,000s Manual exposure. Full frame image.

“Your workshop (Best of Bosque) was wonderful - you chose a beautiful setting, and I sincerely appreciate your time and effort in putting together a great photographic experience. I learned so much from you over the course of the week, including an understanding of histograms, exposure, shutter speed and how various settings interact to achieve the effects we are trying to create. I appreciated your kindness and patience, and regular checking of my histograms, feedback, and answering any and all of my questions! I have some unexpectedly great photos, including sharp ones of the cranes in silhouette against the setting sun!!!”

— Marsha Lomis Ontario, Canada

Kestrel in flight with a Cricket

Another frame from a sequence of an American Kestrel in flight returning to perch in a tree near me with a cricket in its bill. You can see an earlier frame from the sequence by clicking this link to my blog post, American Kestrel in Flight with a Cricket Snack. We sure were spoiled with epic light during the Better than Bosque Workshop!

American Kestrel in flight with a cricket snack (Falco sparverius, Crécerelle d'Amérique, AMKE) from my Better than Bosque workshop. Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio, New Mexico, USA. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds. Sony Alpha alpha 1 Mirrorless camera & Sony FE 600mm f/4 G Master OSS Lens with Sony FE 2X Teleconverter @1,200mm ISO 2,000, f/8 @ 1/5,000s. Manual exposure.

Sandhill Crane After the Storm

This Sandhill Crane was photographed during my Best of Bosque Workshop as it landed in golden light after a storm that brought record-breaking rainfall during a drought. The dark stormy sky was the perfect backdrop as hundreds of Sandhill Cranes started to land in the fields. My December workshop is full this year, but a couple of spots are left for 2024!

Peek-a-boo Sandhill Crane in flight

It was a very different day in Bosque del Apache yesterday after the rain. I invited the new group out to shoot for the afternoon before the workshop starts, but I changed my plans to bring them to another refuge because they had closed with impassable muddy roads. The light was still really dark and the roads were wet and muddy with much less bird activity today. Things should dry out quickly and I expect everyone will make an amazing portfolio of images over the course of the next five days.

Sandhill Crane landing head on

Here is a Sandhill Crane from yesterday morning while scouting for my Best of Bosque workshop. Although the light was dark and overcast, the background and head-on landings made it an epic morning for me. While most are complaining that there are no cornfields near accessible roads, the backgrounds this year are fantastic - far better than chopped cornfields of years gone by :)

Join me at Bosque del Apache NWR next Dec. Learn more HERE

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Join me at Bosque del Apache NWR next Dec. Learn more HERE 🦆

Sandhill Crane Predawn Call

Here is another Sandhill Crane from my Better than Bosque workshop last December 7. It was dark, the air was cold, but still and we listened to the chorus of Sandhill Cranes waking for a good long while before they started to fly out. The dark overcast conditions were perfect for low contrast out-of-focus backgrounds. The key when working at high ISOs like 16,000 is to expose the image perfectly and try your best to capture full-frame images that don’t require cropping (or much cropping).

Join me in New Mexico from Dec. 5-9 for my Best of Bosque Workshop Adventure.

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CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE OR SIGN-UP

Join me in New Mexico from Dec. 5-9 for my Best of Bosque Workshop Adventure. ☞ CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE OR SIGN-UP

Sandhill Crane on final approach

Here is another Sandhill Crane from my Best of Bosque workshop last December. It is surprisingly difficult to to get a head-on landing image with the head and neck clear of the wings and body. As always, having five full days and an abundance of subjects and activity with an ounce of patience paid off - wink.

Bosque Dawn Silhouette Eagle in a tree with Sandhill Cranes

Here is a dawn silhouette from my 2008 Best of Bosque workshop. As with pretty much all of my silhouettes, I took some creative liberties with the white balance to make the image pop.

Great Egret with dinner

It’s not too late to join me in New Mexico for my Best of Bosque workshop from December 5-9! CLICK HERE to learn more or sign-up for my five-day workshop at an incredible location, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.

Coyote

We had some awesome Coyote encounters during my Best of Bosque workshop last December. The record-breaking drought in the west meant much fewer flooded wetlands for migrating birds, so all of the wildlife was concentrated around the limited flooded zones: Much like during the dry season in Africa, where there is an abundance of prey, there are also predators lurking.

Sandhill Crane Landing at Last Light

After a cold morning start and a brutally harsh sunny day, we were rewarded with the warmest, sweetest last light and hundreds of Sandhill Cranes landing in front of us.

Join me for my Best of Bosque Workshop December 5-9 in Socorro, New Mexico (near Albuquerque). Learn more HERE.

Snow Goose (blue morph) Landing Head-on

The dark color of the blue morph Snow Goose is controlled by a single gene, with dark being partially dominant over white. If a pure dark goose mates with a white goose, the offspring will all be dark (possibly with white bellies). If two white geese mate, they have only white offspring. If two dark geese mate, they will have mostly dark offspring, but might have a few white ones too.

The oldest Snow Goose on record, a blue morph, was shot in Idaho in 2020. It was 30 years, 8 months old and was originally banded in Arizona in 1990.

Mallard drake in flight dorsal view

A drake Mallard offers a dorsal view while in flight during my Better than Bosque workshop in New Mexico last December.

Migrating mallards have been clocked flying at 88.5 kilometres per hour (55 miles per hour), slightly faster than the average waterfowl. While they usually cruise at an altitude of less than 10,000 feet, they can get much higher. In 1962, a mallard was struck by a commercial airliner at 21,000 feet—a record altitude for a bird-aircraft collision at the time.

Neotropic Cormorant

A Neotropic Cormorant lands directly towards me. If truth be told, I was really hopeful of a similar image of a Redhead, Widgeon or Canvasback, but this is, without a doubt, my favourite image of a Neotropic Cormorant.

Northern Pintail in flight

“My recent trip (Dec. 2016) with Chris Dodds to the Bosque del Apache reserve was a roaring success! Five full days of shooting opportunities were exactly what I bargained for, and great lessons were learned. Specifically, high-quality results come with time, patience, and attention to detail. My experience with Chris gave me a taste of all three in a truly relaxed and fun atmosphere.

Each and every one of our five days offered welcome variation in conditions to provide a broad package of opportunities. I left the workshop with a full portfolio of portraits, flight shots, behaviors, and great shots of those magnificent “blast offs” of thousands of white geese and elegant cranes, all under excellent light conditions for bird photography. Chris is a master at choosing and teaching about the best positioning for photos (clouds, sun, wind, behavior etc.) It was a busy time, with all the instruction I wanted, and that’s exactly how it should be!

I most admired Chris Dodds’ active coaching combined with openness to questions at any time. Chris was often right next to us shooting away and teaching-by-example, but his clear priority was to boost the abilities of each participant, no matter whether they were beginners or pros. It is a rare ability to coach a well-experienced photographer one moment, and then patiently help a newbie with a point-and-shoot learn how to set up their tripod!

I’m busily planning another trip or two with Chris!”

— Darrell Vodopich, Waco, Texas