The Learning Curve

[ColinM]

You could preface these images by saying the learning curve applies to both me and my subject:

• I have been trying to capture these birds (with varying degrees of success) over the past few weeks
• Today's main attraction is trying to learn how to feed from a bird feeder - with limited success
  (Which meant he had lots of goes at trying, and so did I!!)

[ColinM]

I had some good advice from Mongo on an earlier thread....which I still wasn't able to follow because I had to grasp the opportunity and despite changing my shooting position, couldn't really eliminate the distracting background. Shame as the blue colours do reduce the impact of the beautiful blue feathers of the jay.

But this time, I had enough light to use a higher shutter speed (in exchange for slightly trickier contrast)



Jays have a very distinctive manner of flying and this shot managed to capture the sweep of their wings and the way it displays that blue patch

[ColinM]

These are not from a single sequence, but the bird kept trying (and failing) to extract a peanut so I had plenty of attempts.
He must have been quite hungry by the end....

[Fons Baerken]

I admire your patience and persistence, there is something in the background like a colourful piece of cloth, that i find disturbing,
and i am sure you will get the desired skill photographing birds.

[ColinM]

Thanks Fons

there is something in the background like a colourful piece of cloth, that i find disturbing,

Yes, I was shooting from an upstairs window and despite moving from one side to the other, couldn't eliminate the distracting background.
I thought about trying to remove it in PP, but my skills aren't good enough.

Here's the final stage of the "attack", when gravity finally takes over and he has to think about returning to terra firma

[Peter Connan]

Very very nice!

Particularly the second one!

[ColinM]

Thanks Peter.
If you take enough pictures of birds in flight, you realise what a huge range of shapes their bodies and wings move through.

At the widest arc of their wing beat, the Jays wings look really good because of the fine display of contrasting patterns & colours on display. Nice to be be a able to get a view of this from above too.