Kicking off this year's odds and sods with Starlings in a rainbow on that extreme rarity: sunshine.
It was early morning, with the sun barely cresting the tree line. We were able to get out for our morning walk as it wasn't raining. This photo is my trusty Canon 80D and Sigma 18-300mm lens zoomed in at 300mm.
Pulling back a bit.
And finally all the way back.
Oh, 2024 got off to a good start with this.
So far my cat, perhaps two neighbouring cats visiting our garden, a local fox and Tawny owl, and this trap have accounted for at least five of the beasties. Sightings of rats in our garden are getting rarer, so I think I'm winning. Two rather timid and wary rats, that I know of, are proving more elusive to catch. I've resorted to buying a lethal trap. The trap was triggered, yesterday, but no rat, sadly. Though a mouse might have triggered it, and was small enough to be within the kill bar.
90% luck, 5% field craft, 5% camera skills.
Thank you.
I have no idea if the bird has a tag. It would be fascinating if it did. Try and get any number or id.
Thanks all for the GSW comments. It's mainly down to the joys of burst mode photography, a tripod and decent sun. Though the latter looks as if it will be disappearing for a while.
No burst mode photos today, more in the pipeline. Old school single shot photography.
I'll stick my head in this hole, 'cause know there's something in here.
Look what I got!
Latest burst stuff from that lovely summer's day a week ago. We were wrapped up like Inuits for this morning's walk.
The Robin stayed in the vertical plane of the focus area, which meant it was in focus from top to bottom. Cropping out two from the sequence
The joys of bright sunshine, warm weather and a tripod.
"Angus M "I have no idea if the bird has a tag. It would be fascinating if it did. Try and get any number or id"
It is your last photo Angus, looks like something at the bottom of the wing near the body but an odd place for a tag? Can't really make out what it is, maybe just the light and colours?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
If you look at the third photo from the end, you'll see a garden cane. It has a green eye protector on top and a white shop price label facing us. It's below the woodpecker in this photo.
The white label is what we can see at the bottom of the wing near the body, in the last photo.
Ah ha, now I see it, obvious when you know what you are looking at, thanks Angus
I have the advantage that I know it's there as I put it there.
WOT! More Kingfisher photos.
Oh yes. Even though the thing is 60m away, and my Sigma lens can just about get a reasonable to awful photo, I shall take full advantage before this beautiful creature flies off. It does have sufficient food as the golf course has several large ponds, well stocked with fish. The course manager is very pleased to have a resident Kingfisher, and is equally pleased at the amount of wildlife on the course. So the ecology needed to support the Kingfisher will remain.
We spotted the Kingfisher, yesterday morning, a later time than usual, 8:08am. We would normally have passed the viewing spot 15-20 minutes earlier. We watched it hunting and preening for half an hour before having to continue our walk.
Light isn't brilliant this early in the morning. Not bad, but not brilliant. It was patchy, due to cloud. I had no option but to press shutter release when a cloud came over.
Shutter speed was set to the R7's max of 1/16000. Perhaps I should have set it to 1/10000 or 1/5000. Tricky when the sun pops in and out.
Tell you one thing. Holding a long lens steady for minutes on end whilst half pressing shutter release is very, very taxing. Even when leaning against a tree.
Additional: I really, really, really do not understand how this new forum software works. I studiously set the width of these images to 640 pixels. Each and every one of them. I can see that the pictures are 640 pixels wide. I submit this post...and the software then displays each photo at double the width I specified! Even more than the default of 960 pixels. What's even more odd is that the sizing seems random. I have set the width to 640 pixels recently, and photos have been displayed at 640 pixels wide. Do the same again, as here, and photos are displayed at what looks like double what I specified.
Angus M said:Tricky when the sun pops in and out.
We don't have that problem around here ... it doesn't pop out ... .
Well captured Angus ...
As for sizing, I know what you mean. On my last post I put 600m in each box, that wasn't too bad. Maybe a little small for some tastes, but I think putting the same value in each box may help.
Also the correct size only shows when it is actually posted, not while the post is being built. So on occasions I have pressed 'Edit' and adjusted the size using the corner handles.