I had some photography fun the other afternoon, capturing garden birds mid-fight; but first the flying deer, which I was not too happy about!
I set out one morning to see if the deer were around. Unfortunately there was someone walking just ahead of me with two dogs – not the ideal situation if you are hoping to see any deer. And more unfortunate, there were deer about and the dogs spooked them. Well, more than that, one of the dogs chased a deer. Really wasn’t happy to see it happen – the dog running at the deer and the deer running for its life! The only good thing is (if there is a ‘good’ thing about this), it is much more likely the deer will outrun most dogs, especially when they can reach speeds of 40mph. The deer sprang over the field, the river and up and away into the woodland.
I do really like dogs, but I wish owners would make sure they had control over them. This is for the safety of the dog and others. What if the deer had gone in another direction and over a road, with the dog chasing it!
Capturing birds in flight is a fun (and sometimes frustrating) pastime. The advantage I have is that my Olympus camera has a feature called ‘pro-capture’. Without getting too technical, basically what it does is record images whilst the shutter is half pressed. When the shutter is fully pressed, the camera keeps a set number of images from when it was half pressed, together with images from when it was fully pressed; so you kind of have before and after images. Why is this so good? Think about it. If you press the shutter when a bird is leaving it’s perch, you’ve already missed it; there’s no way you can press that shutter in the fraction of a second it takes for the bird to fly off. So, you focus the camera on the bird, press the shutter half way and wait. When it flies you press the shutter all the way, and you’ll get photos of birds in flight. Bear in mind though that it’s still a tricky thing to do. Out of a few hundred photos, I had half a dozen that were keepers! Good fun though!
I managed to get blue tit, goldfinch, nuthatch and great tit.
I love these pictures of garden birds in flight! We just don’t see them like this in the normal way of things.
Usually, photographers concentrate on the big dramatic birds of prey…
Thanks for sharing these Nigel, they are great (as are the ones of the flying deer, even though the reason for its flight was not so good!)
Thanks Sue. Glad you like them.
Nigel