Battle for the food

Every day a lot of birds come and visit the feeders in front of the hide. When I'm in the hide only one of the feeders is left at a selected position. The cue in front of the feeder sometimes reminds me of a busy airport. Every now and then the birds start to fight for the food. Today a blue tit and a great tit started to fight on my photographic branch, which was positioned about half a meter above the ground. They ended fighting on the ground. Such an action takes place in a split second and it's a hard job to get focused pictures of the decisive moment. It certainly helps that the autofocus of the Nikon D3 and the AF-S VR 300/2.8 are very responsive. Today I managed to get the following action shot of two fighting tits. I'm not satisfied for the full 100%. There is room for improvement, but the beginning is there. More opportunities will hopefully follow. The fighting arena needs to be optimized and better weather is welcome. Today it was cloudy and I needed ISO 2000 to get shutterspeeds of about 1/1000 sec. Such fast shutterspeeds are necessary to freeze such action.




Greetings,
Dirk-Jan

First results from the hide

After some weeks of preparation, inspiration, and fine-tuning, I spend last Saterday in the hide for my first serious bird photography attempts. In order to make attractive pictures of rather 'normal' bird species one has to carefully selected the decoration in the scene. Here are the first results of two rather normal birds in an early spring setting with catkins of the common hazel. I'm quite excited with the possibilities and opportunities of my outdoor photography studio. More to follow..............

Cheers,

Dirk-Jan