{"id":129836,"date":"2023-02-11T05:13:50","date_gmt":"2023-02-11T12:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=129836"},"modified":"2023-02-11T05:30:15","modified_gmt":"2023-02-11T12:30:15","slug":"belted-kingfisher-hovering-and-then-beginning-to-dive-on-a-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/11\/belted-kingfisher-hovering-and-then-beginning-to-dive-on-a-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"Belted Kingfisher Hovering And Then Beginning To Dive On A Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning a change in shooting strategy allowed me to get some kingfisher photos that have eluded me for years.<\/p>\n

Until yesterday I’d never been able to get frame-filling (after only moderate cropping), sharp photos of a hovering kingfisher. I have photos of them hovering at a distance but not up close with good detail.<\/p>\n

There’s a reason for that. When kingfishers hover (they don’t always) they typically do it after they take off after a fish but before they hit the water. If I get the takeoff shot, which in the past I’ve always tried to do, I usually don’t have time to get them back in frame and in focus while they’re hovering before they dive on the fish. Their hover usually doesn’t last long enough for that.<\/p>\n

So yesterday I decided to sacrifice the takeoff shot by not even trying for it. Instead, I’d wait and watch until the male kingfisher began to hover and then<\/em> try to get him in my viewfinder and in focus before he dropped on the fish.<\/p>\n

The first time I tried it, it worked. I got 16 sharp photos of him hovering without clipping any body parts. But as luck would have it, in the first seven shots he was facing directly toward me, while looking down, so there was absolutely no light in either eye.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

But just before he dove on the fish while hovering his angle changed slightly, just enough to provide a tiny catch light in his left eye. This photo and the following three are consecutive shots in the burst without any skips.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Here his body is beginning to rotate from hovering and into the dive.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Still rotating. Because of insufficient depth of field his right wing is soft.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In this last shot his dive has begun. It’s the last shot I got without cutting off body parts at the bottom of the frame. In case you’re wondering, he missed the fish.<\/p>\n

If felt pretty good to have some success the first time I tried a new strategy. I’m such a creature of habit I tend to be an old stick in the mud and do things the same way again and again, forever.<\/p>\n

Yesterday was another reminder to try to be a little more flexible. I’ll work on it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday’s blog post<\/a><\/span><\/span> was about the problem I had two days ago, getting soft photos in cold temperatures because of the temperature disparity between my relatively warm lens and the cold outside air. Shooting conditions yesterday were nearly identical to the day before, with me shooting from my pickup window with temps in the high teens and low twenties. But yesterday every shot that should have been sharp, was sharp. Every last one of them. <\/em>Go figure.<\/em><\/p>\n

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If you’re like me you’ve often wondered what the function of those highly conspicuous bright white spots in front of kingfisher eyes could possibly be. Here’s one theory:<\/em><\/p>\n

“Some scientists call these white spots \u201cfalse eyes,\u201d and believe kingfishers use them as sighting devices to focus on prey. A kingfisher, theoretically, uses binocular vision to align the white spots while looking down its bill at a fish, like sights on a gun barrel. This allows the bird to accurately compensate for the refraction on the water\u2019s surface that makes a fish or crayfish appear closer than it is.”<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning a change in shooting strategy allowed me to get some kingfisher photos that have eluded me for years. (5 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2853,5,6,334,395],"tags":[2329,4723,1239,6727,146,6726,1347,2330,6728,6725,311],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/belted-kingfisher-9881b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-xM8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129836"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129836"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129905,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129836\/revisions\/129905"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}