In the Field

Soaring Sandhill. Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada. May 29, 2026.

One of the little-known facts about the Great Bear Rainforest is that it's a great place to find and photograph Sandhill Cranes. Sandhills breed in the Great Bear, arriving in the early spring and staying around until autumn. They can be found almost anywhere in the Great Bear Rainforest, including in the long coastal mainland inlets. But they are highest in numbers - and certainly the most conspicuous - on the outer islands of the Great Bear. While I'm certainly not suggesting the Great Bear Rainforest rivals other Sandhill hot spots for photographing Sandhills (such as the Platte River Valley or Bosque del Apache), if you're open to photographing something other than bears when visiting the Great Bear Rainforest they can be a great "bonus" species!

In late 2025 and running through 2026 I decided to experiment with Sony camera gear to see if it would better meet my own photographic needs than Nikon gear did. I decided I would primarily shoot Sony gear on my 3 main photo tours of the 2026 season and not decide if I should stick with Nikon or transition to Sony until I had completed the photo tours.

This particular image was captured early on my first photo tour of 2026 - during my "Spring in the Southern Great Bear" Instructional Photo Tour. In fact, this was pretty much my first "shot in anger" burst of shots captured with the Sony A1 II and Sony FE 600mm f4 GM OSS combination (of course, before the tour I had extensively tested the gear and, from a purely technical perspective, I was very familiar with how this combo of gear performed).

Anyway...this image (part of a much longer burst of shots) was a very quick and spontaneous "grab shot" where I had almost no time to set up. And how well the AF system grabbed the crane and stuck with it (under tricky lighting conditions) went a LONG way towards convincing me that the Sony gear was not lacking when it came to capturing the sort of action this wildlife photographer is exposed to on a regular basis.

Here's a larger version (4800 pixel) of this sunlight Sandhill:

• Soaring Sandhill: Download 4800 pixel image (JPEG: 3.0 MB)

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

1. These images - in all resolutions - are protected by copyright. I'm fine with personal uses of them (including use as desktop backgrounds or screensavers on your own computer), but unauthorized commercial use of the image is prohibited by law. Thanks in advance for respecting my copyright!

2. Like all photographs on this website, these images were captured following the strict ethical guidelines described in The Wildlife FIRST! Principles of Photographer Conduct. As such, no baiting or any form of attractant was used and, as always, we attempted to minimize our impact on the ongoing behaviour of the subjects. I strongly encourage all wildlife photographers to always put the welfare of their subjects above the value of their photographs.

3. This image was captured during my Spring in the Southern Great Bear Instructional photo tour in late spring of 2026. Each year I offer photo tours into the Great Bear Rainforest and, every other year, photo tours into the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Sanctuary (to photograph grizzlies, of course!). Details about these trips can be found on the Photo Tours page of this website.

Behind the Camera

Soaring Sandhill. Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada. May 29, 2026.

Compressed RAW (ARW) format; ISO 2000.

Sony A1 II paired with Sony FE 600mm f4 GM OSS lens. Hand-held from floating Zodiac inflatable boat. OSS on and set to Mode 1. Expand Spot (tracking) AF area mode with subject recognition mode set to Bird.

1/2500s @ f4; -1.3 stop compensation from multi-metered exposure setting.

At the Computer

Soaring Sandhill. Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada. May 29, 2026.

Initial noise reduction and capture sharpening on the .arw (raw) file using the DeepPRIME XD3 algorithm of DXO PhotoLab 9.5 Elite (using the appropriate camera/lens module).

Subsequent adjustments to the adjusted linear DNG file (exported from PhotoLab) and conversion to 16-bit TIFF file (and JPEG files for web use) - including all global and selective adjustments - made using Capture One Pro (build 16.8). In the case of this image only two global adjustments were made - a reduction of the highlights and a global contrast adjustment using the Levels tool. Selective local adjustments performed using Capture One Pro's layers and masking tools. In this case numerous small adjustments and minor tweaks were made on 4 separate layers, with the tweaks being associated with "exposure balancing" and contrast adjustments (such as adjustments to brightness, clarity, highlights, shadows, blacks, etc.).

Photoshop modifications included insertion of the watermark and/or text.

Conservation

Soaring Sandhill. Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada. May 29, 2026.

Species Status in Canada*: Not at Risk.

Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis) are large, heavy-bodied, long-necked and long-legged birds that inhabit open grasslands, meadows, and shallow freshwater marshes. They are found widely in Canada and the US. Sandhill Cranes can live to 35 years or older in the wild. First breeding can take place between 2 to 8 years in age, depending on several factors (subspecies, population, and individual development). Between this delayed breeding and their low annual reproductive success (approx. 0.35 young/yr) population growth of the Sandhill Cranes is very low, even when conditions are optimal.

Breeding pairs and families make up the primary social units, but at times Sandhills are highly gregarious with extended family groups and unrelated birds roosting communally and/or feeding in large flocks.

Although Sandhill Cranes experienced dramatic population declines across North America in the first half of the twentieth century owing to human-induced mortality (including habitat loss, human disturbance in remaining habitat, and hunting) today only the Florida population is known to remain in decline. Although the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists the species of "least concern" the low annual recruitment and slow population growth rate gives some level of concern for the future of this species.

*as determined by COSEWIC: The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada