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| TITLE: | Two Coots fighting
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| INFO: | "The following day from the previous image and with the settled sunny calm weather continuing I'd returned to Goosander Hide early to find lovely flat calm water in front of the hide but with no birds on the water nearer than 60 metres from the hide.... just thirty or so Sand Martins flying in and out from the wall. For the bird photographer Goosander Hide can sometimes produce gold but can also sometimes produce nothing, particularly frustrating when conditions are ideal for the desired images.
However, after an hour, a Coot mosied in closer to the hide and subsequently took exception to another which had followed it in and a very brief fight ensued - literally two seconds, according to the sequence of shots I took. I'd noticed beforehand that the first Coot had assumed a low 'threat' pose so I'd already focused on him and was ready for any potential action - it did help that they were the only birds on the water at the time! but it does show that watching birds' behaviour goes a long way to helping anticipate such action and then have the camera ready for it. Like the previous image, this one shows those big kicking feet quite well and the image is is nice and dynamic, but the camera autofocus has veered toward the splashes a little too much such that the right-hand bird is just sharp enough and the left-hand bird - being not quite side-on enough to the camera - is just off-focus, but it's interesting to see that the right-hand bird is almost jumping out of the water in its attack against the other." May 2012 (Goosander Hide) |
| TECH: | Nikon D700, Nikkor 200-400mm f4 zoom lens at 400mm, ISO 1600, f5.6, 1/3000 sec.
Hide shelf platform with ball head. Cropped image about 70% of frame from full-frame FX format image. |
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