![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/belted-kingfisher-2420-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"belted-kingfisher-2420-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nMy first kingfisher in a very long time.<\/p>\n
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1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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 Yesterday morning I was photographing other birds when this male Belted Kingfisher flew in to do a little fishing. He fished from a variety of perches, some of them close to me but more often he was further away. I was able to photograph him taking off several times but most of his fishing perches were cluttered with branches so the settings and backgrounds were busy and distracting.<\/p>\n While I was with him this was the cleanest fishing perch he used but he wasn’t very close to me so I had to crop these images significantly, resulting in some loss of image quality. I still like the photos well enough to post them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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 This is the next photo in the burst as he dove after a fish. I very rarely get a perfectly clean background like this in a photo of a kingfisher in flight.<\/p>\n I’ll be posting more photos of him at a later date but as usual I have a backlog of culling and processing to do before that can happen.<\/p>\n I was highly impressed with his fishing skills. In the 17 minutes I spent with him he caught and consumed at least five and possibly six small fish. When he finally left the area I’m convinced that the reason he left wasn’t the clueless photographer who got out of his car and walked back and forth along the road in repeated efforts to get as close to the kingfisher as possible.<\/p>\n Instead, I think the reason he left was because he was full after eating a half dozen fish in such a short time.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My first kingfisher in a very long time.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/belted-kingfisher-2421-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"belted-kingfisher-2421-ron-dudley\\"")
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