Stithians southern cut off today

It was good to be out and about on a lovely sunny but cold day at Stithians southern cut off hide today and I was pleased to record my first female Brambling image of the year posted below thanks to the eagle eye of Hilary Mayes

The feeders were very busy with small birds including several raiding parties of  Long Tailed Tits and Goldfinches and I was treated to a nice take-off sequence to merge by the resident female Great Spotted Woodpecker

 All to soon it was time to head off home to do battle with a new desktop computer and lots of new software so this blog might be a little late on posting tonight !!

Recent Stithians flight portraits

Following on from 'The Pecking Order' blog I have added here a few more flight Photo opportunites produced by the attraction of birds to Stithians feeding station,  First up the female Great Spotted Woodpecker is alerted by the sound of my shutter firing and the second image of her immediate departure is merged with the first,  Blue Tit, Chaffinch,  Long tailed Tit and Coal Tit form part of a steady stream of birds flying to and from the feeders, and male and female Bullfinch will often feed under the feeders and on surrounding vegetation seed heads as in the final image.

Close portraits of small birds

Wildlife photography has its share of challenges and when it comes to taking close portraits of small birds they will drive you crazy as they always seem to move on just as you get a clear view focused but before you can the shot !    My approach is to work from a reasonable distance without chasing after the subject using a 500mm  F4 lens and a 1.7 converter to achieve a focal length of 850 mm which will work down to a minimum focal distance of 3.5m, This will record the likes of the Blue Tits below full frame,  With a heavy camera and lens I do not consider hand holding for anything more than an ID shot,  I always work from a tripod with a gimble head that allows freedom of movement, critical composition and point of focus while taking the weight of the equipment for the duration of time that any one small bird might present itself at a close enough distance for a successful portrait,  I often find by being static that many birds will keep on moving towards me rather than chasing tails while on the move, sometimes they even end up closer than the minimum focal range but this should not matter for they do as you will already have had the opportunity to take your full frame image before they move out of focal range.