catbird photo I posted yesterday<\/a> whose tail was extremely out of focus because I was using my default camera settings (f\/6.3 in particular) to give me oodles of shutter speed? Notice that the same thing happened in the first shot above, the tail is soft at f\/6.3 because of insufficient depth of field. So when this flycatcher turned around on the perch and looked like he would stick around for a while I decided to risk it and take the time to change my aperture to f\/9 and then refocus on the head of the bird.<\/p>\nIt worked! Even though in both shots the tail appears to be about the same distance from the plane of my point of focus (his head) the tail is sharp in the second photo while it isn’t in the first. There were other variables involved too (distance from subject for example) but I’m convinced that in this case it was my aperture setting that made the difference.<\/p>\n
It’s nice to see “theory” pan out in the field.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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I’ll close by doing what I often do – include a highly cropped version of one of my post photos to show interesting detail. Here we see two flycatcher adaptations, the hooked bill that makes capturing insects on the wing much more efficient and the rictal bristles originating near the gape of the bird’s mouth.<\/p>\n
For years it was thought that rictal bristles function as a sort of physical trap or net to allow birds to more efficiently scoop up insects as they foraged through the air but today the consensus among ornithologists seems to be that the real function of rictal bristles is sensory, letting the bird know its speed and orientation in the air.<\/p>\n
Our knowledge of birds marches on.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Correction: In researching this post I found several recent sources that stated or strongly implied that the “consensus” among researchers is that the primary function of rictal bristles is sensory. But based on comments from others and additional research after I arrived home from shooting this morning it’s not as clear cut as that. Apparently there still is no consensus on their function.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While photographing this flycatcher I did what I didn’t do with yesterday’s catbird. It actually worked.<\/p>\n
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