Out of sequence, but too exciting to wait.
Jenny had seen this bird (or a relative) twice before in the garden, once when it actually flew in at high-speed and tried to attack finches on the bird feeders, the other time just sitting like this one in the apple tree having missed it’s prey and reflecting on what it should do next. We had also seen the results of a successful attack in the mangled remains of a wood pigeon at the bottom of the garden. So it’s a local bird! This one’s a female.
This time I was able to get the camera out, put the telephoto zoom on – it was being very obliging – and take three shots, of which this was the best.
What was interesting was that while it was sitting in the silver birch, there was not another single bird in the sky – they all knew it was in the vicinity. Immediately it flew off, there were birds in the sky again. Even the jackdaws had been keeping cover.
It’s at times like this that it’s great to have so many pixels to work with. I’ve included the original uncropped image below …
[EXIF: 200mm, 1/200sec @ f/4 and ISO 160]
A good photo of a good subject, David. I look forward to more. Such a low ISO too.
The bird was very obliging. I went upstairs to fetch the camera, fitted the zoom telephoto, decided to use Auto mode as I realised it wasn’t going to hang around for me and that’s how the ISO was selected. No science applied I’m afraid.