Sunset cranes

I promised to post a couple of pictures from yesterdays swamp meet and write a few thoughts on cranes. Let's start with the pictures:
The first picture gives an idea on how hopeless our situation was for photography. With the cranes at such a distance from us there was not much hope of getting the type of pictures that I was aiming for. The picture was taken with a 400mm lens and has not been blown up at all.

The second one I feel is beautiful in its own way, with a purple shade of the sunset and a flock of cranes flying towards the camera. A sight like that causes a photographers mind to start racing and heart to pound with excitement. Will the cranes land close or just fly by? If they land, how will they be situated in relation to the hide, will the background give maximum effect to the pictures and so on. The list of thoughts racing thru a naturephotographers mind looking at a sight like that one is almost endless. Yesterday they flew right by us.

It has been interesting to notice how differently cranes act at the swamp compared to when they are at fields nearby. A flock of cranes on a field could not care less if I walk to the edge of the field to take pictures. At the swamp, the slightest sight of a photographer at the edge of the swamp causes the flock to move farther away and at the swamp the distances in question are much greater from the beginning. Cranes landing on a field do circle the area before they land, but very seldom change their decision to land, even if they do spot a human somewhere close to the field. At the swamp the birds will pull up immediately if they spot any movement at their intended landingsite, as was the case with our group yesterday. Once landed, a few birds will keep their head up at all times, monitoring the surroundings. If any movement is seen, the entire flock will know about it immediately, most often resulting in having all the birds look first at what is happening and then the entire flock rising to their wings. It would be rather easy to take note of which fields are used by cranes during the ongoing fall migration and then pick out a suitable ditch at the edge of the field and lay there under camonetting taking pictures. I just don't feel that it would be the same. Difficult and challenging way of getting it is what makes a good picture all the more valuable for me personally. Besides, my goal at the moment is to capture life in the swamps in pictures, so I can't really go take them in some field, can I?