Wood pigeon and Black-headed gull

I went to Slimbridge a few days ago and it was moderately successful for ducks in flight, but on a quick walk around I was struck by how many Wood pigeons were fighting each other. Two days later when there was a good sunny forecast I returned and spent the day in one spot feeding the birds and hoping for a dramatic action shot. In the warm sunshine however they were in a good mood and being very tolerant of each other with little interaction. Save for a bad tempered Black-headed gull who would not share the food with anyone. I would expect the hefty pigeon to get the better of the gull, but the gull was very dominant.

Canon EOS 1Dx. 100-400mm MK2 lens. 1600 iso. 1/5000th at f11.

Stills Photography Days are Numbered

One of the two pictures here is a frame grab from The Lunix GH4 running in 4K cinema mode, the other was taken on the Canon 1dx. The Lumix gives 24 fps and records on a continuous loop so I just leave the camera running. When I think a bird has flown into the right air space and might be in focus I press the button to stop the loop recording and save it. Then I start the camera running again for the next shot. The loop is 10 minutes long and if there is a setting in there to shorten it I have not found it, but 10 seconds would suit me better.

Auto focus would not stand any chance so it requires prefocusing on one spot and hoping. Each frame is 3328 x 2496 pixels which gives a 24 Mb file. Amazing! How do they do that! The shutter speed can be set up to 1/8000th of a second, which means frame grabbing from video is now very possible. In the old days (last year) movie film and video used a shutter speed of about 1/40th, which was far too slow to give decent stills of subjects in action.

Will it be the future of wildlife photography? I suspect so. The next generation will give even better quality and larger files I am sure.

Buzzard

This bird has been coming to road kill I have placed on this branch for months, but as usual with Buzzards it does not come every day.

It is taken from a hide, but unusually the hide was only put up on the day of photography. Normally with buzzards I would expect to have to leave a hide in place for several days to get them accustomed to it. The hide is next to a bramble bush so does not stand out. If I did the same in the middle of a field I would not expect the buzzard to accept the hide.

The bait is just off to the birds left. Canon EOS 1dx and the 800mm f5.6 lens. On the estate where I photograph there are no livestock to graze the grass and there is a shortage of suitable places where I can photograph buzzards on the ground. I need to find somewhere else as I am fed up with doing them on posts and branches.