![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/belted-kingfisher-0846-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"belted-kingfisher-0846-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 1250, 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>\nIn this shot the kingfisher had flown further away from the tree it had been perched in so the branches are less dominant than they are in the previous photo. I was disappointed that the end of his right wing was soft – at this shutter speed the softness certainly wasn’t caused by motion blur so at f\/5.6 the culprit must have been depth of field. But studying the image reveals two things that I find interesting:<\/p>\n
\n- As both a photographer and a biologist I’m always interested in precise indicators of how fast birds actually are. By comparing the two shots I can tell how far and what direction the kingfisher has traveled in exactly one tenth of a second (the burst rate of my camera is 10 frames\/sec and these are consecutive photos). And since my focus point was inactive for both shots and the bird remained sharp in both of them that tells me that his forward motion was negligible during that tenth of a second. If he’d been flying toward me the second photo would have been soft.<\/em><\/li>\n
- I have quite a few photos of birds in flight with one or both alulae, also known as “bastard wings”, deployed (separated from the wing) but I don’t remember ever seeing as much separation between alulae and wing as we see in this kingfisher’s right wing. For the vast majority of the time both alulae are held flush against the wing so they’re difficult if not impossible to see. Generally the alulae are only deployed during slow flight.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I hadn’t even noticed the alula in this second photo until last night so I’m glad I went back for a second look. I also have to wonder why the alula is deployed in the second photo but it isn’t in the first.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Notes on the alulae:<\/p>\n
\n- Last I heard science still doesn’t know for sure if birds have control over alulae deployment or if they deploy automatically during wing action.<\/li>\n
- “In most situations, the alula is held flush against the wing; however, it can be manipulated. When flying at slow speeds or landing, the bird moves its alula slightly upwards and forward, which creates a small slot on the wing’s leading edge. This functions in the same way as the slats on the wing of an aircraft, allowing the wing to achieve a higher than normal angle of attack \u2013 and thus lift \u2013 without resulting in a stall. The tip of the alula forms a tiny vortex that forces the airflow over the wing to better bind to it.” (Wikipedia)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I like both images but for different reasons.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2853,5,334],"tags":[953,1348,4897,1349,2329,146,4896,2330,2738],"class_list":["post-80281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belted-kingfishers","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","tag-alula","tag-alulae","tag-alulae-control","tag-bastard-wing","tag-belted-kingfisher","tag-flight","tag-how-fast-do-birds-fly","tag-megaceryle-alcyon","tag-takeoff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/belted-kingfisher-0846-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-kSR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/belted-kingfisher-0845b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"belted-kingfisher-0845b-ron-dudley\\"")
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