![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/red-breasted-nuthatch-7054-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-breasted-nuthatch-7054-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nYesterday morning I often had more birds in front of me than I could aim my lens at. That hasn’t happened in a very long time.<\/p>\n
I’ve been going to the same spot in the mountains for weeks now but bird activity has been slow to nonexistent and many mornings I was nearly or completely bird-skunked. But yesterday was different.<\/p>\n
Waves of mixed flocks of Red-breasted Nuthatches and Mountain Chickadees kept coming through to feed on Douglas Fir seeds, to the point that at times it almost sounded like a shooting gallery inside my pickup from the shutter sounds of the two of us firing bursts at about 10 frames\/sec. It was a rare luxury to have to choose between individual birds and even different species to point my lens at.<\/p>\n
Damn it was fun!<\/p>\n
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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 Here a nuthatch has just extracted a seed and is preparing to fly off with it, most likely to cache it as they were often doing. Usually in my photos I had fir branches and needles and\/or other cones behind the bird but this is one of the rare instances where I managed to get a clean background. I like the fine detail on the dorsal surfaces of the nuthatch, the head turn that provided a good look at the face and eye and of course the upside down pose. The seed in the bill is a bonus.<\/p>\n There may have been a lot of birds but that’s not to say the shooting was easy – far from it. Even with the sun fairly low in the sky it was very difficult to get catch lights in their eyes or a good look at their faces as they were poking around in the cones looking for seeds or hanging upside down from them. Depth of field was also a problem at such close range at my focal length. I took over 1100 photos but after culling to get rid of the garbage I only have a few of them left and many of those are only marginal keepers.<\/p>\n But that’s how it goes with bird photography and it beats the hell out of coming home with my tail between my legs and smelling like skunk.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday morning I often had more birds in front of me than I could aim my lens at. That hasn’t happened in a very long time..<\/p>\n