I like herons. We get 'm in two basic flavours. Tame, sometimes tame enough that if you go fishing somewhere it will sit next to you ready to snatch whatever you catch before you can get the hook out.



Then there's the more or less wild variety. A lot less used to humans and incline to take off if they think you get too close. This one didn't, judging by the beak it's so young it has not yet learned to act wild.

Herons have another advantage for us photographers, they're one of the few birds with a build-in grey card (you know, those cards with 18% grey you can get to really nail your exposure).



It's true, meter on a grey area of the bird using spot metering and you will nail the exposure each and every time!

Grasshopper Warbler
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Yesterday I got my first ever chance to photograph a grasshopper warbler. These are generally shy birds that are often heard but rarely seen. The characteristic sound is a very long rattle, almost like a rattle snake. I heard this one long before I got a chance to see it. This was an unusually tame bird, I got the chance to take 40 pics at a comfortable distance. Light wasn't from the best direction but this way it does work I think. While I was observing it I was stunned at how long such a tiny bird can make so much noise.

Here's the sound one of these makes:courtesy of wikimedia

waterspreeuw / White-throated dipper
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Quite rare in the Netherlands, extremely rare in the west part of the country, normally you only find this in Limburg and the Ardennes in Belgium/Luxembourg.
Nice bird to watch, very active and still tame enough to approach closely. Constantly in and out of the water. I've seen it fly trough a cascade of water to search for food behind it.

I found this bird via the website waarneming.nl where twitchers post all sorts of bird sightings. This one was spotted in a nature reserve where I walk almost every weekend.

Because I had 2 dozen confirmed sightings to work with it was extremely easy to pick an area to start searching for it. Right at the edge of that area I noticed 6 other bird enthousiast staring at something. Bingo! There it was darting in an out of the water. The 6 gave up rather quickly muttering something about a more tame second dipper that was supposed to be in the area. I walked to the other side of the clearing where the bird was and just waited leaning against a tree. Took about 10 minutes before it came close to me while foraging. I even managed a second shot when it had caught something.



Of course I'm not entirely satisfied with these shots. A grey, misty morning is not the best time to get enough light, let alone nice and warm light which does birds a lot more justice. I also wished for more tele than my 70-300VR provides. Despite that I think I did well and I got to shoot my first truly rare bird.

Bird photography part 2

all pics are clickable

After blogging about my first problems here I decided to give it another try with the new settings in my camera.

First of all, using the AF button proved to be an interesting experience. It takes a bit of getting used to, at first you're jabbing the AE-L button by mistake but after that there's certainly a speed advantage there.

My first chance I got when an egyptian goose decided to fly around. Came almost directly over me to give me this shot:


Not bad at all but not quite the level of sharpness I am aiming for. Let's look at settings:

Exposure:	0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture:	f/13.0
Focal Length:	270 mm
Focal Length:	269.1 mm
ISO Speed:	640

Hmm... 1/800 and still movement? Why? According to a quick google the canadian goose can fly anywhere between 50 and 90 km/h. Let's assume this goose can do the same and let's assume it was doing 40 km/h. That's 11.1 meters/second which means still about 1.4 cm of movement in that 1/800. Of course part of it was compensated for by my panning movement but still... So shutter speed remains an issue there. Spot metering worked very well here.

Next I encountered a flock of great tits and blue tits in a pine grove. Even though these are about as common as muck they are still good practice. Working distance is a factor with these birds. If you can get as close as 5 meters it's already a lot and then it's still a tiny bird.

Exposure:	0.001 sec (1/1250)
Aperture:	f/5.6
Focal Length:	300 mm
Focal Length:	302.0 mm
ISO Speed:	640

The issue here is that my settings didn't do what I'd expect them to do. Despite auto iso I was shooting wide open here and the 70-300VR isn't at it's best wide open.

1/1250 is enough to freeze these birds if they are just sitting there. If they flutter from one branch to the next it doesn't do it.



OK, so shutter speed remains a focus.

Now, standing still about 5 meters from the trees did allow the birds to get used to me and ignore me which resulted in these two:




and



On this shot you can see a few ticks around the bird's eye.

Now, later in the day this setting came back to bite me in the behind.



Granted, it's a unique moment, pre-mating activities of Storks. And yes, I had about 30 seconds before she fled the nest. And 1530 is not a good time for black&white birds. But why is this pic unsharp?

Exposure:	0.003 sec (1/320)
Aperture:	f/20.0
Focal Length:	300 mm
Focal Length:	302.0 mm
ISO Speed:	640

There we go. At f20 most consumer zooms the diffraction spook rears it's ugly head. According to Thom Hogan the d300 itself shows diffraction from f11 onwards.
What happened is that my spot metering adjusted perfectly for the focus point on a white part of the stork And since I was at a relatively low shutterspeed the camera raised the aperture to prevent overexposure.

Next stork shot, a bit later.



A lot sharper and no wonder since I was at f9.

So... lessons learned?
- shutter speed is so important with birds
- watch your metering, you don't want to enter the diffraction zone
- Birds in flight depend at least as much on you and your reaction speed as they do on your gear
- A 70-300mm zoom is short but it's still possible to get some decent bird shots with it.

I'm already looking forward to my next experimental session.