Wildlife photographer
Noppadol Paothong arrived at 2 a.m. to set up his photo blind. About an hour
later, the birds made their entrance.
“My heart was pumping,”
Paothong said.
Of course it was. It had
taken five years of back-and-forth to secure permission to be there to
photograph one of the 10 most endangered bird species in the world.
“I had my lens trained
on one bird,” Paothong said. “He was very close.”
Paothong crouched inside
the camouflage blind and waited for the light. After several numbing hours, the
temperature persistent at minus-6, the sun slowly rose, first illuminating the
Colorado peaks nearby.
His Gunnison
sage-grouse, akin to prairie chickens, had not yet begun that fancy dance so
alluring to females: fanning his tail feathers and strutting about, puffing up
his yellow eye combs, throwing out his white chest and filling two plump air
sacs to make its pop-pop percolator call.
The sun was up. The
timing just right. And …
“A golden eagle came
in,” said Paothong, the vexation still in his voice about the predatory
interloper, “and my bird left.”
A vicious spring
snowstorm then blew in, and it would be three days before he had another
chance.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/04/3900560/photographer-chronicles-vanishing.html#storylink=cpy
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