When you see them coming at you like this, the speed and agility obvious, you just get as ready as you can be.
A quick mental check list of what you need to do…
and they have turned, twisted, and are past you already. 😂
Best viewed large.
Think Tree Swallow and Kingfisher on the waters surface.
The trail behind the birds is the waters surface lightly touched by their lower mandible.
The bubbles around the water, these are actually small minnows churning the surface when the beak and shadow push through the school of fish.
I look through this web site to see what might be available to photo based on previous years. We didn’t think we would have a chance at Black Skimmers this year due to the very high water.
Thanks to Ellen for thinking of one more spot no matter the insects and tall grass.
Black Skimmers, ACE Basin, South Carolina.
That must have been a wonderful experience, the pictures are beautiful and sharp as nails !
Thanks, finding Skimmers is a celebration 😂. Very frustrating too. While we shoot birds in flight constantly these are in a class of their own.
When they fly straight at you, or away, Bird Tracking has almost nothing to focus on, they are pencil thin. All the vendors fail a bit here. When flying side to side, well they live in areas with grass, reeds, and cane up to 2.5 meters high. What you need is a wide gap. Here it was a gator trail and water trunk to control flow. You can see the birds, but no time for anything but photo through the gap.
What you might find interesting is using the Leica 100-400 here. It’s a distinct disadvantage. The zoom is very stiff, all of us here using the lens know it, but love the glass. In the past Sigma was my choice for this, a smooth zoom, glass good, but not like the Leica. Thanks, still working through the images, 1,000. Keepers, we shall see 😂😂
The Leica is indeed a bit stiff, but the Olympus 100-400 isn’t much better, and the only reason I still keep the Oly is because it can use a converter, other than that, the Leica outperforms it in many ways.
Some time ago I had a similar problem with an airplane where the focus would not lock, it followed approximately the same path several times, so I switched to manual focus, determined a fixed point and with the shutter on auto I followed the aircraft into the sharp zone – resulting in about 50 blurry ones and 2 fairly sharp ones.
It’s always easy to say from the side, I know, and with such skinny birds it will never be easy, but maybe it will help something. Anyway, now that I know how much effort they took to make, I’m even more impressed ! Have a nice Sunday Ted.
The stiff zoom is just something to be aware of 😂🤣. There have been plenty of adjustments changing gear after all these years. It works well and I’m not the only nature photog that has this setup. Day to day I rarely use bird tracking, we have been out here full time for 8 years LOL. Never had it before so…
Thanks for the kind words. Just posted shots that did really push that lens/camera and keeper rate was still high. 👍