For The Birds
The weather has been a bit poor here over the last few weeks, so I've confined myself to daily walks along the local canal with the OM1. While this is a nice location, it can get a bit samey and I end up shooting relatively mundane subjects. Not quite in the ducks on the local pond department, but not far off...
Still, I did spot this injured Buzzard swooping down on its prey in a field on the far side of the canal, although on this occasion I only had the venerable 12-100 on the OM1, so the results are not as good as I'd hope to get with the 100-400, although, given the 12-100 is a nice sharp lens, these don't look too bad.
Not sure what's happened to its wing, presumably it got into a fight of some kind, but it didn't seem to be stopping it from soaring and swooping down with precision, although on this occasion it did appear to come away empty handed (or should that be taloned?)
On another walk along the canal, I spotted this little character enjoying a nice puddle bath on the towpath. On this occasion, I did have the 100-400 on, so I managed to fill a decent portion of the frame without getting too close and scaring it off.
And of course everyone loves a Robin...
This last week saw an improvement in the weather, with several days turning out to be really nice, so for three of them I decided to get up at ungodly-o-clock to shoot the sunrise on the moors. While all three walks were highly enjoyable despite the frequent yawning (I must try getting to bed earlier), the sunrises were not the most dramatic, so I'll save them for a different post (maybe next week if I've got nothing new by then).
On one day I came across this little fella singing its heart out...
On another I encountered a tree full of crows, out a murderin' no doubt...
And then, on the final nice day of the week, when I'd got up at 5:30 to catch what turned out the be a very mediocre twilight, I'd more or less finished my walk and was heading back to the car when I spotted what I thought was a Kestrel (but turned out to be a Buzzard) in a tree on the edge of the field next to the one I was in.
It was clearly surveying its surroundings while resting in the tree, so I decided to wait around and see what it did next. I must have waited for about 10 minutes before it finally started to look a bit more agitated and launched into the air...
At first it appeared to be heading into the woods that run along the field boundary, but as it approached the tree line, it swung round and instead of crossing it, followed it along the edge of the field, eventually leading it across the field I was stood in. As I tracked it with the Z8 and Nikkor 100-400 f/4.5-5.6S at 400mm I must have rattled off about 40 shots before it disappeared into the rising sun to my left, roughly half of which were in focus with my combination of AF-C plus bird subject detection and a medium sized tracking box, six of which I'm really pleased with.
Despite the relatively close flight path, these are still quite heavy crops, so they've all been run through Topaz AI for upscaling and slight sharpening before being downscaled to 2K again on export from Capture One, but when it nails focus, the 100-400 is very sharp, so they've got a good level of detail in them.
I was also quite lucky with the light. These were taken shortly before 8AM, so the sun was sat above the moors to my left and the sky was clear, so the bird was lit with a strong golden light from one side as it flew past me, which really helps to define its form in the image. Apart from the crop and upscale, these have had very little done to them (just a slight shadow lift IIRC).
