The grey weather is still with us, but that doesn’t really bother juvenile moorhens too much. These are three photos taken yesterday and today of one of the youngsters at the edge of Falmer Pond. I love them at this very elegant stage in their development.
A nearby rat looks to see what all the fuss is about. It wasn’t impressed.
Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.
It’s been a Bank Holiday – hence wet and miserable weather-wise. Yesterday was better which is when I grabbed these first two photos of newly fledged birds.
The first is rather a large baby… a young woodpigeon already showing its aerial capabilities. At this age they tend to look somewhat scrawny and lack the neck markings of the adults.
Late yesterday afternoon a small group of more typical fledglings turned up en masse. A family of blue tits. The light was all but gone, but a corner of the garden was just catching the last of the sunshine.
Today it’s been pretty much a constant drizzle, but fledglings can’t stop for the weather and we had two more visits. Well, there were probably more than that but I was inside sheltering from the rain. First is a young great tit.
And then a little later on the family of blue tits were back. These were taken from the far end of the garden, in the drizzle so apologies for the lack of quality. In the first two frames two fledglings can be seen (one’s at the back, out of focus). The adult then appears and feeds the one nearer the camera before continuing in its search for food.
Camera note: photos 1 and 2 taken with the Canon 7D and EF 400mm f/5.6L USM lens. The rest were taken with the trusty EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.
Nothing too exotic today (though do look at the video clip at the end). I was playing around with my EF 400mm f/5.6L USM prime lens between rain showers. It’s a good lens but in the past I’ve had difficulty consistently achieving sharp shots with it. That’s partly because it lacks image stabilization, but I’ve also suspected it needed calibrating (which is possible on the 7D). A few test shots seemed to indicate it was focusing short (i.e slightly in front of the image). I tested various settings (trial and error) and found a 10 point adjustment seemed to do the trick. The camera retains the settings on a lens-by-lens basis, so I should now be able to forget about it and get on with the business of taking photos. See what you think 😉
First a couple of photos of one of the ubiquitous garden woodpigeons.
Now for a the equally common jackdaws.
My favourite sequence though was a magpie. A pair were flying back and forth between the gardens for most of the afternoon (their nest is about six gardens away).
All in all I’m reasonably pleased with the results. The lack of stabilization does mean I need to work harder to get the shots, and I certainly need decent light to keep the shutter speed high. The adjustment does seem to have helped and I achieved a better ratio of keepers than usual. What I would really like though is this (unlikely to happen any time soon).
Now for the video clip. It’s a female badger showing signs of lactating. 😀
Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D and EF 400mm f/5.6L USM lens.
