Way back in November 2011 my buddy Bill took me out to Jasper State Park in Indiana to check out these Sandhill Cranes. I was not a birder at the time but up for the challenge of taking pictures of these flocks getting ready to take off for Florida or other points south with a long lens. For this opportunity, I rented a 600mm f4 lens, which is the size of a small telescope. It is quite the lens and was selling for over $10,000. However, you could rent it for a couple of days for a hundred bucks. So I did and got some excellent pictures with it. These Sandhill Cranes are probably a half mile away and this shot is way cropped in on top of that to get these rather large birds somewhat large enough in the frame to make an interesting picture. Anyway, mission accomplished, and this was shot with just a 12 megapixel camera. Cell phones are better than that today.
