Spruce Grouse

Spruce Grouse

While visiting Manning Park this past weekend I encountered a par of female Spruce Grouse. At first the plumage of the birds left us unaware of the birds presence, but then they started to slowly move, which caught my eye. The pair did not seem concerned by the presence of humans, which is not surprising since we encountered them along the rather busy main trail around Lightning Lakes.

From a photography standpoint this was not an easy shot, first of all the birds were moving around, and the lighting in the forest along the lake was terrible. I was shooting at ISO6400, and getting a shutter of around 1/160s on the D800 with the Nikon 70-300mm F4.5-5.6G VR lens. The even more interesting part of the story is that thanks to the birds not caring too much about our presence, I had time to change lenses from the AF-S Micro 105mm F2.8G VR, that I had been shooting mushrooms with just minutes before, to the 70-300mm. Of course I did loose the opportunity to photography the birds when they were much closer, and this encounter makes me want something like the 28-300mm VR, for day outings that are not a photography focused.