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<\/p>\nWe arrived home from our latest\u00a0camping trip yesterday afternoon.\u00a0 We had five days of adventure, great birds and beautiful country in Montana and Idaho.\u00a0 The weather was good until the end when the\u00a0forecast turned a little sour so we decided to head for home before the holiday craziness got out of hand.<\/p>\n
One of our favorite photo subjects was the pair of nesting Williamson’s Sapsuckers that we first found on our last trip to the area a month ago.\u00a0 This time\u00a0I decided to experiment a little more with shooting angles and techniques and concentrate\u00a0on action shots.\u00a0 This post consists of only a single image because I haven’t yet even seen, much less culled or processed, most of the many thousands of images I took on this trip.\u00a0 The\u00a0next few days are going to be busy ones…<\/p>\n
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1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n When we arrived at the nest-hole we were delighted to find that\u00a0both adults were busy feeding chicks and maintaining a tidy home for their family.\u00a0 Here the male is leaving the nest after delivering a beak-full of ants to ravenous youngsters.\u00a0 At times the adults had so many ants in their beaks that it almost looked like they were carrying\u00a0large clusters of grapes.\u00a0 The chicks weren’t yet old enough to poke their heads out of the hole but we could\u00a0clearly hear them.<\/p>\n The dead aspen leans considerably so I didn’t (and won’t in the future)\u00a0rotate to straighten it.\u00a0 I thought the shadow on the aspen of the birds tail, foot and leg was interesting.<\/p>\n Shooting conditions for action shots\u00a0at the nest-hole tree are challenging.\u00a0 Light hits this side of\u00a0the tree for only a few hours in the morning and even then it’s often dappled\u00a0so exposure is constantly and rapidly changing.\u00a0 The background is tricky with all the light (aspen)\u00a0and dark (conifer)\u00a0tree trunks combined with\u00a0some bright blue sky back there.\u00a0 But despite the challenges I’m confident that I was able to get many interesting images of these sapsuckers (and other birds and wildlife)\u00a0that I’ll be sharing over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n I look forward to seeing them myself…<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When we arrived at the sapsucker nest hole we were delighted to find that both adults were busy feeding chicks and maintaining a tidy home for their family. <\/p>\n