Photographing wildlife is a continual mix of repetition and the unexpected. Most of the time you work with the former… you go to places where the local wildlife is likely to show, you time your arrival, and you go back to places where you've previously had good sightings. And most of the time you see what you expect. Well that's not quite true. A lot of the time you see nothing. Some of the time you see what you expect. And occasionally you witness something out of the ordinary. Or in today's case something that isn't really unusual, isn't really unexpected when you think about it, but nonetheless creates exactly the kind of moment you're looking for.
The complete sequence is over here.
Camera note: all shots taken with the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens
cakkleberrylane
10 Feb 2008What a picture!!! Thanks for sharing that!
Words
10 Feb 2008Lois, a pleasure. Glad you liked them 😀
Words
10 Feb 2008Mickeyjoe, what was great is that it kept the apple perfectly in line over the whole sequence! But I guess crows are renowned for flying in straight lines… 'as the crow flies'.
Mickeyjoe-Irl
10 Feb 2008:doh: in the previous post I thought that the apple was the bird's head and it was looking at you.
Mickeyjoe-Irl
10 Feb 2008😆 Good one.
BitzyMe
10 Feb 2008ahhh yes… the old New England Saying.
"Down the road a piece as the crow flies!
Fantastic Shots!
Vulpes vulpes
10 Feb 2008So, is it a crow carrying an apple, or an apple carrying a crow? 😉
gdare
10 Feb 2008😆
SittingFox
10 Feb 2008It's amazing that something as big as an apple doesn't interfere with its weight distribution during flight! It must have felt a bit top heavy 😆
Great shots :up:
Dudley
10 Feb 2008That is so awesome! Great capture!
Words
11 Feb 2008Darko, :cheers:
Words
11 Feb 2008Vulpes, well I did almost call the post 'the flying apple'. The crow is strangely coincidental to seeing a piece of fruit go by like that 🙂
Words
11 Feb 2008Adele, it did a good job with it and covered a fair bit of ground. I couldn't see any noticeable effect on its flight pattern.
BitzyMe
11 Feb 2008All I can find for certain that "as the crow flies" is an English Idiom. Wikipedia doesn't have much of anything on the history.
I have a feeling that it is a very old phrase that's been adopted and re-adapted by many countries for hundreds of years. (stepping down from her pulpit) 🙂
Words
11 Feb 2008Bitzy, it would be interesting to check where the phrase comes from (and whether it's the same in other languages).
Words
11 Feb 2008Thanks Andy :cheers:
Flying Red Fox Blog
12 Feb 2008Very cool:D Its an amazing moment to see it and even better to catch it on camera!
Words
12 Feb 2008Mark, apart from being a tiny bit closer I couldn't have asked for more. The sun was behind me, the crow kept to a moderate height and flew several hundred yards in a completely straight line