Category Archives: Birds

Badger Visits, plus a Kingfisher

November 13, 2014 by Words | 4 Comments

The title covers just a couple of today’s featured wildlife. The badger was photographed last night. It’s a very regular visitor to the garden, but generally rather shy.

Badger

Badger in the rain

Today took me past Seven Sisters. It’s always a good place for birds, and today was on the upper end of the scale. There were numerous cormorants:

Cormorant

Cormorant

Several little egrets (this is the pick of the shots)…

Little egret

Rabbits…

Rabbit

A rainbow 😉

Rainbow

And most special of all, a kingfisher. I saw it flash past along the water, catching me by surprise and attempted to track its flight as it disappeared into the distance. This is probably the pick of the shots (heavily cropped).

Kingfisher

Last word to last night’s badger:

Badger

Camera note: most photos taken with the Canon 7D Mark II and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens. I used the EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM for the badger.

Also posted in Badger, Farming, rabbit, water birds, Weather Tagged , , , , |

Auto-focusing on Goldfinches

November 12, 2014 by Words | 4 Comments

These are a long way from being the best photos of goldfinches you’re likely to see, but they are a great illustration of the very sophisticated auto-focus settings on the 7D Mark II. The flock came in quickly, passed overhead and disappeared. Maybe 7 or 8 birds in total. It’s absolutely the kind of shot that I would have missed with the old camera.

I had the camera AF mode set on the ‘Case 6’ setting which is ‘for subjects that change speed and move erratically’. The AF area covered all 65 points, and the setting means that the camera will track movement and automatically select the correct focusing point from among the 65 available. Both these shots are heavily cropped.

Goldfinches in flight

Goldfinches in flight

I managed around a dozen shots in a burst, all with birds in focus. This bodes extremely well for the annual summer challenge of photographing swallows and swifts, and possibly even dragonfly.

Photographing ducks lazing on the water is altogether easier. It was nice light though, so I couldn’t resist this lady.

female mallard duck

The last shot this evening is a fox. Finally. Just one frame, taken this evening in drizzle.

fox

Camera note: bird photos taken with the Canon 7D Mark II and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens. Fox photographed with the EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM lens.

Also posted in Foxes, water birds Tagged , , |

Cormorant and other fine birds at Falmer

November 11, 2014 by Words | 4 Comments

A major thunderstorm passed across the South of England last night. Whether it’s coincidence or not, I don’t know; but a cormorant turned up at Falmer Pond this morning, and stayed for the day. It’s been a long time since one has pitched up at the pond, but it seemed set for the duration and was happily swimming up and down searching for fish.

Cormorant

Cormorant

Cormorant

Cormorant

It was nice to have one of the more interesting species back at the pond, but the gulls were also putting on a good display. This is a juvenile herring gull taking off from the water. Tracking this kind of movement has become a whole lot easier with the 7D Mark II. It really is incredibly responsive.

Herring gull

Herring gull

I’m really happy with the 7D Mark II, and am getting used to the multiple ways of setting up the autofocus. I sincerely doubt I’d have caught this final shot of a black-headed gull staring down the camera with the previous version.

Black-headed gull

The one irritation at the moment is that Lightroom won’t process the Raw files from the Mark II. No doubt an update will appear, but for the moment my work-flow has become: upload and sort in Digital Photo Pro v4.0; convert to TIF and download; upload TIFs to Lightroom; edit; download TIFs; upload TIFs to Photoshop; edit and convert to sRGB; download as JPG file. It’s slow, but it works!

Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D Mark II and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.

Also posted in water birds Tagged , , |