Well,

In the wild everything has its own beauty, Hence the title. Here in the prairies it can be a challenge to make things look as wonderful and dramatic as they actually appear.

I hope you enjoy, and I am open for any constructive criticism and ideas to have made it better.

Dale, the northern prairies are truely a magnificent wilderness and I really envy all the opportunities you have for filming wildlife there. I am used to hearing the Eastern Meadowlark, but I believe I can hear the beautiful musical call of the Western version in your film, along with the Red-winged Blackbird that makes a flyby. The Redheads are just stunning ducks. We get a few every spring for a few weeks in the same area where I film Buffleheads and my jaw just drops every year when I see them for the first time. Glad you got the XL2 back and running for this challenge. Good work.

Rick

I enjoyd your film Dale.
Great with the sounds of birds in it. The first one, what kind of bird is it?
It sounds like a turkey, but they are a little bit bigger I think :)
I can see a little bit shaking picture at sometimes. Tripod?
All in all a great film.

Wow, that prairies is flat! The music put me in a nice mood and substantiated the footage in a nice way. There was some hard cuts in the edit and more use of a tripod has been mentioned.

Green not white but green...I enjoyed the flow of the film the music moved right along with it. Shows me that it is summer out there in southern Canada.

Enjoyable.....Brian

Dale, you managed to show the beautiness of your area!
I like your video. You captured those birds very well.
Did you shoot some of it handheld? (the camera shaking wasn't that bad, but noticable)

Great job!

Dale:

Nicely done. So wide open! It gives one a sense of tranquility and, well beauty as per your title. I love the ending. The owls are a beautiful shot. Thanks for the entry.

Cat

Thank you all for the commentaries.

As some know I fell and broke my xl and my tripod!!!! got the camera back in time.
However I did not have an adequate tripod to work with at all!!!! Yes I did use one but it had to be kept so loose to make any movement I got the shake!!!! You all problably think I have parkenson's disease.

I by shear luck/blessing did come across an old miller for a song, but not in time to reshoot. Can't wait for July!!!


geir, the first bird filmed is a Sharp Tailed grouse. They are quite larger than a red grouse. The cock sharp tails weigh in at 36 ounces to 44 ounces. I believe that is about the size of a grey hen of the black grouse.

They are my favorite of all upland birds and are the major reason I moved to the prairies.
Of course I love all waterfowl too.

I was going to do a naration but for some reason i couldn't get my computer recording cleanly, Should have got started on that sooner!!

competition is getting steeper!! I can usually pick four of the top real quick and can select top dog easily. this time I have 6 and not so easy to pick my top dog!!!

I like the diversity of all the birds, but think I enjoyed the grouse most- great footage, and nice sounds of their calls to go with it. It makes me want to get down to that area with my video camera!

Ruth

Nice job Dale! I am glad you kept the Owl's in there. :D

It looks really flat and wendy there... Somewhat reminds me of Texas..

IMO, I would maybe cut the audio out of the tracks in part of it, and ad on some bird sounds from the internet. That way you have a cleaner sounding video.. It was just a thought.

The brown duck(?) going under the water was awesome! I never knew they could do that, and I spent plenty of time with them for my first UWOL entry if you remember "Duck, the Snow Falleth". ;)

Nice stuff, it was rather enjoyable.
~Gabriel

Dale
This is some good stuff. As you mentioned you are using a broken tripod so no comment there. The audio is what I think I would work on. I beleive you said you have Audition. I would work on taking out some wind noise with the Sharp Tailed Grouse shots. On the shot of the shore bird it sounds like some handling noise that I would remove. Over all I thing this is your best piece yet. Well done.

Gordon Hoffman