The Odd Couple
A side track from my usual photographic adventures. Today before work I decided to finally hit up the pond near the local rec center with my rarely used canon 300mm f/4L IS lens, the 1.4x canon extender II and the 5DmkII. At the pond there was not a huge selection of birds, but there where a few hanging out and best of all, they where decent size. Which is good because even shooting with an effective focal length of 420mm, small birds are still small.
At the Waters Edge
To be honest I usually do not shoot to many birds and most of these shots I am not 100% sure what I was shooting, other then a water loving bird. Some of the images here are on the hot side, from shooting at almost 3 in the afternoon, but at least I got some shots in.
Going for a swim
Duing the course of about 15 minutes I tore off about 100 shots trying a bunch of shots, landings, flight, panning and so on. As you would expect many of the shots where out of focus, if not blurry.
Pelicans going for a swim
Duing my shoot, my sister took notice of a smaller white bird over by the rocks, not one of the pelicans I was shooting. I thought perhaps this may be an Egret, but once again I really don’t know my birds. Perhaps a bird guide may be in order. I did get a few shots of the little fellow, one stretched out, but the shot was less then good, but this one came out pretty well, I think.
Egret Hiding
Though the best shot I think came from when I was wrapping up. A larger bird got fairly close to me as it was landing creating a very nice splash down. Although before I could get a good shot of the photos I had to send the camera home while I went off to work. When I loaded the photos up to my PC I saw the small thumbnail for the shot and kept my fingers crossed hoping that between me, the camera and lens set up the auto focus and AI servo did the job. I loaded up the thumbnail and a smile came up on my face…
Touch Down
So, all in all, a very nice shoot with a couple good surprises. Now, I must ask, since I don’t know a whole lot of birds if anyone can ID the birds in these shots better then I have, please give me a heads up.
Allan J. photographic 