Our little Eastern Whipbird friend
Known in Australia for it's familiar call in rainforest settings, this cute(ish) little bird and his female friend has been visiting us for a number of years. Flying up to the back windows of our house, he flutters about obviously trying to intimidate the other male bird (his reflection) he can see. Unfortunately, our dogs don't like this terribly much and so what ends up happening is we have a cycle of his call, the dogs barking (trying to get to him through the window - he can't see them), they race outside and around, he flies off, and then they come back inside and we repeat the process, daily, many times a day at certain times of the year.
This morning I was outside thinking perhaps I may have a visit from the Rosella again, and whilst waiting I was having a play with my camera, which I've now setup with two custom modes - one for fast shutter, multiple shots in high burst speed, and a multi function button to quickly change to another custom mode that will go to single shot, a slower shutter and overall better exposure setting for birds still on a branch.
One of the challenges I've had is that when you set your camera up for photographing birds, you'll have it ready to go with (well, I do anyway), a faster shutter speed, often faster than 1/1250 ready for fast action to pivot and photograph a bird in flight or taking off from a branch, etc. What was frustrating was when that bird landed on a branch in good light, you don't the fast shutter speed and you don't need burst mode anymore. Havng another custom mode and a quick single button to switch to it, means I can quickly move into a better setting that allows for more light, less ISO compensation and overall a better photograph whilst avoiding blur as well.
So, today, a little later this morning I heard the usual shenanigans going on between our little bird friend and our dogs and I thouht I'd see if I could get a photo of him. This took some time as he's very quick to fly away the moment he sees any movement (people, or dogs) and so I had to be very still, quiet and not move until he came back, ready to fly back to the window.
This time, he flew away from the window as he normally does with my slightest movement, and lands in the trees not far from the house - more often than not to the back of the tree where I can't see him. He flew amongst the branches and this time, lucky for me, he landed on a smaller branch at the front and then did his call. Using the custom mode, I captured a good shot of him, and here it is!
Just prior to, and after this shot, I captured the following two shots as well.
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