![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/american-coot-6075-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"american-coot-6075-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nIt may be (only?) a coot but I really\u00a0like the image quality of\u00a0this eight photo series taken yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n
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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in <\/em><\/p>\n Not long before sunset yesterday\u00a0I photographed this extended wing-flap of an American Coot at a local pond. This is the first shot I got as the wing-flapping behavior began.<\/p>\n All eight\u00a0photos are presented in the order they were taken with no skips in the burst except for one – image file\u00a0#6080 (the photo that would have been between #5 and #6 below as the bird was beginning to settle back down into the water)\u00a0is missing because I lost sharp focus on the coot.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in <\/em><\/p>\n The bird’s wing position in the first five shots in the series will be very similar but there’s a reason I’m including all of them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in <\/em><\/p>\n In burst mode my shutter fires at 10 shots per second. The almost exact wing position in the first five shots of this series tells me two things:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in <\/em><\/p>\n The\u00a0wing speed of this coot was almost certainly\u00a0ten flaps per second (male Ruby-throated Hummingbirds can reach 200\/sec<\/a>) and…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in <\/em><\/p>\n it only took 1\/2 of a second for me to take the first 5 shots. That’s pretty darned fast for a bird this size. I like knowing bits of bird minutia like that.<\/p>\n Because my shutter was synchronized with the wing speed I was lucky the timing caught the wings in a visually pleasing vertical position. They could just as easily have been in\u00a0another position that I like less\u00a0in all five shots. But to be honest my preference would have been to have avoided the synchronization to give me more variety\u00a0and potentially\u00a0a more interesting series overall.<\/p>\n Birds obviously flap their wings faster in place than in flight\u00a0and when they do so I\u00a0often wonder what they do or don’t do\u00a0with their wing angles\u00a0to prevent them from propelling themselves forward and even possibly becoming airborne. Hmmm, a potential subject for another blog post if I can figure it out and if I have photos to illustrate it well.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in <\/em><\/p>\n The image before this one is the photo I skipped because it was a little soft. Here the coot is about to settle back into the water after the wing-flapping episode.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in <\/em><\/p>\n Almost\u00a0there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in <\/em><\/p>\n It’s arrived and just about to go about the rest of its business for the late afternoon, including feeding and quarreling with other coots. And that’s yet another reason I like to photograph them – their extremely pugnacious behaviors make them interesting photo subjects, especially during breeding season.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some bird photographers rarely if ever photograph coots. When asked why the most common answers are either because\u00a0coots are\u00a0so common or because\u00a0they think coots are unattractive.\u00a0Or both. But I strongly believe there’s\u00a0a third primary\u00a0reason. With their ivory-white bills and black and near-black feathers they’re\u00a0typically\u00a0quite difficult to expose properly.<\/p>\n For me it doesn’t really matter that they’re common. If it has feathers I’ll photograph it, even European Starlings and House Sparrows on occasion. I don’t think coots are unattractive but even if I did it wouldn’t matter\u00a0and\u00a0I’d still photograph them – hell, I photograph Turkey Vultures with\u00a0relish (now there’s a thought, vultures served with a condiment…). And I see the difficulties of properly exposing them as a challenge or contest\u00a0that I like to at least try to\u00a0win.<\/p>\n My primary goal is high quality photographs and the species doesn’t matter much (although I’ll admit that some excite me more than others). What I’m after is sharpness, good light and exposure,\u00a0appropriate depth of field and shutter speed for the situation, eye catch lights, appealing settings and backgrounds, pleasing compositions\u00a0and interesting behaviors when I can get them. Whew, that’s a tall order when I think about it.<\/p>\n And I\u00a0believe most or even all of\u00a0the coot images in this series hit those marks so I’m quite happy to have them.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n Note: The Club-winged Manakin (Machaeropterus deliciosus) <\/em>is a bird that uses its wings at very high speeds to produce “song<\/a>“, similar to what some insects do.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It may be (only?) a coot but I really like the image quality of this eight photo series taken yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/american-coot-6076-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"american-coot-6076-ron-dudley\\"")
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