gnu_photographer

@Isabelle What happened was that the chick grabbed the tip of the squid in a “tug of war” action and was able to extract a small piece, then the adult bird swallowed the squid back! This happened repeatedly and through co-operation, the chick ingested small pieces. I’ve been reading the Cornell Bird Biology Course and I found 2 facts that helped offer context to the behaviours of these gulls: a) birds have no teeth b) from Bird Anatomy Chapter 6 “some gulls are capable of holding one end of a large fish  in the esophagus whilst digesting the other end in the stomach.” If you are interested, I’ll do up the next couple of frames and share this with you :)

For storytelling, I like to photograph birds feeding. This is a Swallow-tailed gull feeding its chick with regurgitated squid. It was taken in the Galapagos at 420mm focal length. The Galapagos have strict rules in approaching birds, and restrict movement near bird nesting sites, as well as timing and number of visitors. This is good, as it allows us a window to the lives of the birds, as a reward for protecting their habitat and nesting grounds.

@Elizabeth Thanks Libby, for your feedback! :) Here's another birds of the world photo - a Kori Bustard. I have a few more on my instagram page if you are interested. It is the same name as my username.

@Isabelle Great photos, I like how you composed so that the Frogmouth and Chimango Caracara are looking back at the viewer. A nice style.

Thanks for sharing your photos, I really like your grebes photo! Here are 3 tips that have helped me with sharpness: 1. Having solid support - tripod and gimbal (turn off any VR when using the tripod). 2. Back button focusing (decouple autofocus from shutter button to avoid shutter button accidentally changing focus). 3. Photographing during golden hour, side and front light helps define feather detail (use RAW and expose to the right). I mostly use a FX body with 300mm lenses and either 1.4x or 1.7x teleconverters. I’d be interested to hear how you go with your 500m!

I’ve found having good support makes a huge difference to image quality, especially at the higher focal lengths (I am not good at handholding and keeping steady anything more 200mm). This is especially the case for me for lenses without image stabilisation and I think the D780, being a DSLR, has no in body image stabilisation.  I suggest a gimbal, if you would like to take birds in flight. If you would like to take video too, I suggest looking at a fluid gimbal, which will give a smoother panning action.

I'm keen on learning how to photograph effectively from a car, as it appears to disturb the birds less than exiting the car and setting up. I have a bean bag to support the camera and lens, but would like to ask if anyone can recommend a good type of bag or stowage solution that makes it easy to stow and maneuver large lenses between stops. Especially when driving over rough terrain, putting the camera and lens on the car seat does not seem to work well. I'm wondering how Melissa stows her supertelephoto and DSLR between stops in the video "Compare Blinds" (at 4:30) :)