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Abandon Ship!
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Abandon Ship!

by Michele Williams

Gallery: AvianPosted July 11, 2010103 views3 comments
or wimpy Osprey, however you choose to look at it ...

Canon 7D with 400/5.6 handheld
1/1000 @7.1
ISO 200

The mockingbird was taking turns with a common grackle and a ring-necked dove, dive bombing the osprey. The osprey was trying to mind his own business, which was to watch the water below in search of breakfast, but the songbird parents didn't want him in the neighborhood. The fisher birds here commonly use sailboats as perches, so I chose to include the mast in the image, to complement the inevitable cables. In a waterfront community such as ours, boats are a normal, and beautiful, part of the scenery.

Note: Based on the comments, I changed the title from Killer Mockingbird to Abandon Ship, so people would know this was a boat. I didn't want to lose the close up view of the birds by showing more of the boat.

Comments

3 comments
Comment posted by Dennis Plank on July 11, 2010 at 7:15 PM
Great interaction, Michele and the Osprey is very sharp the mockingbird is sharp enough given the interaction. To bad about all the cables, but sometimes you just have to take what you're given. :toast:
Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments
Comment posted by John Tobias on July 11, 2010 at 9:26 PM
Neat photo, must have been fun to watch. My only comment is that maybe there is not enough of the sail boat showing to let viewers know what it is. Thanks for sharing.
Registered on September 12, 2009, 2120 Posts, 6455 Comments
Comment posted by Jim DeWitt on July 11, 2010 at 9:41 PM
A very nice capture of interspecies interaction, Michele. Very good tachs, too. I understand what you were trying to do with the mast, spars and rigging, but there's not enough of it to let a casual viewer ID the stuff. The result is a little distracting. Your watermark location is also distracting; I'd move it to the upper left and shrink it a bit.
Registered on August 28, 2006, 1240 Posts, 8506 Comments