Practice Makes Perfect Right?

Well I’m still practicing and will forever be practicing. What am I practicing? My photography as well, well currently I’ve been trying to get better bird in flight photos, especially those of the local chickadees.

Being that the average wing speed of a chickadee is 27 beats per minute that makes their wings really hard to freeze. Today’s outing with Robyn around the Seawall and to Beaver lake was fun. I managed to keep the shutter speed up between 1/1000 and 1/1250 of a second with aperture being around f4.0.  These aren’t super sharp in focus shots, but I am getting closer to freezing the wings of a chickadee. After all, this is all fun and great practice right? Here are the better photos from today:

Not bad for running at ISO800 and for alright lighting. I suppose I could have pushed the camera to ISO1600 but then they would become even grainier. Well the increase in ISO could help allow for smaller aperture which would help bring more into focus.

The great part of Beaver lake is the lack of people. Not many people venture into that part of the park, which means more oppurtunity to play with the chickadees. Occasionally there are also eagles perched in the trees around the lake. If you’re REALLY lucky you might see the resident beaver too!

One tidbit I recently learned about chickadees is their behavior with other birds. They will watch other birds while feeding and if they find it safe, will modify their behavior to get food more effectively. This was apparently true as more and more chickadees showed up and were less cautious about landing on Robyn’s hand to pick a sunflower seed out. When we stopped feeding them, they would fly up close to us hoping we would continue to feed them too. Anyway we continued our walk back towards the West End.

Robyn really wanted to feed the Mute Swans so I gave her more seed and she went over to feed one of the females. I’m only assuming it was a female mute swan because their necks are a lot smaller than a couple of the other ones. If you have never fed a swan before, they nip pretty hard and have rigged beaks, well the inside anyway, sort of like really small teeth.  In the first swan photo you can actually see the swan pinching Robyn’s palm.

There was also a juvenile Great Blue Heron just hanging out and about a dozen pigeons (flying rats) too. The pigeons were pretty annoying as I threw seed at the mallards and would fly in formation around us. I managed to capture on in flight though with his feathers all fanned out before he landed.

I’m glad for these sunny days and try to utilize them to the best of my ability. As I learn to use a higher shutter speed and smaller aperture I’ll be able to freeze action, which is great (an necessary) for sports photography.