Travelling Light – Photographing Light
I’ll been watching a pair of Nuthatchs all spring – they started nesting in a tit box months ago and now appear to be raising an unknown number of young ones. The Nuthatch is actually not that common a bird here in this part of West Yorkshire and not seen at all most years (at least by me).
Continue reading “Nuthatch”
28th February 2020
Following our 2 days in Wilpattu we had a transfer day over to our home for the next few days near Habarana. Habarana is the gateway town for the Minneriya National Park one of the best spots to see Asian Elephant on the island but more of that tomorrow.
27th February 2020
Large mammals are well represented in Wilpattu – we had good sightings of many species ranging from Ruddy Mongoose upto Sri Lanka’s apex predator and everyones number one target the Leopard.
27th February 2020
More birds – Willpattu really was heaving with life on our second day in the park.
Continue reading “Wilpattu National Park – Day 2 (Birds Part 2)”
26th February 2020
Wilpattu National Park is located in the Northwest coast lowland dry zone of Sri Lanka, it is the country’s largest national park. The unique feature of this park is the existence of “Willus” (Natural lakes) – Natural, sand-rimmed water basins or depressions that fill with rainwater.
On an evening walk last night I spoted this fellow (male roe deer) in a wheat field but typically I didn’t have anything longer than 60mm with me and he was a long long way off. So this evening I went out again but this time with the M.Zuiko ED 300mm f/4.0 IS Pro (600mm FF) in hand to see if I could find him again. I did but again he has a long way off in fading light and very flighty. These are big crops and ok a full resolution but don’t bear much further enlargement due to atmospheric disturbance .
I was busy photographing the Oyster sheds at La Baudissier when I noticed a Barn Swallow shooting in and out of a gap in one of the sheds, presumably feeding some nestlings. Up for a challenge I thought this might be a good opportunity to once again test out the 6K functionality of the G9.
So a little while ago I wrote a blog post here about the G9s 6K Pre-burst function. My conclusion on this function was that whilst it had its uses its usability, for me, was very much degraded by what I considered to be very poor auto-focus speed. Further investigation of this issue has not, unfortunately, found a solution – the simple fact is that the 6K photo functions are essentially using video technology including the cameras video auto-focus which is hugely inferior to the lightning fast stills auto-focus system. Overall therefore I am afraid that 6K photo is for me a disappointment.
The funny thing about the Hoopoe is that it is one of those birds that if you go looking for them you will never find them. They are common here on Fuerteventura, although less so at this time of year when I think they must be sitting, and yet I have really struggled to find one to photograph.
Who knew that Stone Curlews yawn ?
Well this chap was clearly so bored with having my PL 100-400 poked in his general direction that he had a yawn and nigh on fell asleep !
More bird photography today, no particular targets just a question of what was about. Unfortunately as with most recent days here in the Canary Islands it has been exceptionally windy and hence most things were hunkered down resulting in few decent targets. However I did manage to capture some nice shots of Fuerteventura’s only endemic bird the Fuerterventura Chat (a 1st winter male) and also an extremely handsome Spanish Sparrow that was having a good old sing song.
Aside from testing out the G9s 6K mode the real purpose of the day was to try and capture some nice images of a couple of the more common birds of Fuerteventura, namely the Desert Grey Shrike and the Spectacled Warbler.
So I was out today doing bit of bird photography and as the Desert Grey Shrikes were being particularly confiding I thought I would give the G9’s 6K photo mode a try. In 6K photo mode the camera is capable of taking images at an incredible 30 frames per second whilst still supposedly continuously auto-focusing and metering.
Not the most obvious location for a wildlife safari but when needs must the migrant photographer must make do with what’s around.
A Good Place to Stand 