![\"mountain](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/mountain-bluebird-6171-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIt’s surprisingly difficult to anticipate direction of take-off, even as birds leave\u00a0the entrance to a nest cavity in a tree. One might think that the physical presence of the tree itself would make it relatively easy to catch the bird in the frame as it leaves because the tree reduces the direction they can\u00a0go by about half. But birds are so creative\u00a0in flight and it all happens so quickly that capturing them at that moment is still a huge challenge.<\/p>\n
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\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n This is the female Mountain Bluebird at one of the nest cavities in an aspen 6 days ago in Clark County, Idaho. At this point competition for the cavity between the bluebirds and a male Northern Flicker was still pretty intense but for a variety of reasons I believe that the flicker and its eventual mate\u00a0will likely be the tenants of the cavity this nesting season. This is one of only one or two instances where I saw\u00a0either bluebird\u00a0bring nesting material to the cavity.<\/p>\n I expected the female bluebird\u00a0to enter the cavity with the nesting material but birds are very unpredictable and I was after flight shots at the time so I tried to be ready for anything. She had a surprise in store for me, on two levels.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n Not only did she fail to enter the cavity but she took off from it in an unusual manner. She simply pushed herself backwards from the nest hole and then dropped almost straight down in front of the tree, a maneuver I hadn’t seen before and one I\u00a0certainly didn’t anticipate. I was\u00a0lucky to avoid clipping\u00a0any body parts even with my teleconverter removed (I have no more room at the bottom of the frame).<\/p>\n I’m constantly amazed by the flight creativity of birds.<\/p>\n All this may seem like much ado about nothing but as a photographer who\u00a0regularly strives to capture birds in flight I need all the “edge” I can get (especially since I don’t shoot setups)\u00a0so I think about and even study this stuff a lot. And the reasons for my intense interest in bird behaviors are, at least in part, selfish ones. To some degree the more I know about them the better bird photographer I can become.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s surprisingly difficult to anticipate direction of take-off, even as birds leave the entrance to a nest cavity in a tree.<\/p>\n![\"mountain](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/mountain-bluebird-6172-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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