Defending the Perch

Canon EOS 7D, EF 500mm f/4L IS USM, Aperture Priority, f/7.1 (1/250 sec), ISO 800, 0 EV, Tripod, JPG from RAW, Cropped About 15% in Total from Lower and RH Edges, Non-Captive Subject

Over the past 10 days or so I've invested well over 20 hours during four visits to my favourite location for sightings of one of my favourite bird species, the Indian Roller. As some of you who happened to see my last thread will know, my principal aim in working with this subject is to capture perfect (to my mind and eye!) images of full spread wings, preferably in flight, but ones like this will also work for me ;^)

With Jim's kind permission, I'm posting up two images here taken less than a second apart, as this is the best way to add a fuller visual context to the storyline; ordinarily I'd chose to post the first one up then post the second one 48 hours after, but as I've unfortunately clipped so much of the bird on the left I don't feel it's really worthy of posting up on it's own.

So there I was, happily photographing this young Indian Roller waiting for it's parent to fly in with yet another tasty morsel, when it suddenly started flapping it's wings wildly and giving off a slightly more intense cry. With my face pushed up against the camera and my eye and concentration full on the young one, I had no idea of the reason behind this change in behaviour, until the “reason” flashed into my viewfinder: a Greater Racket-Tailed Drongo had flown in from nowhere in an attempt to claim the same perch!

Young as the Roller is, it stood it's ground, so to speak, and soon ended up reclaiming the branch. It all happened so quick that, frankly, I'm amazed I managed to get anything decent out of the few shots I managed to fire off. Of course I would have loved to have been able to get all of the Drongo in, particularly it's two-pronged wiry tail each ending in a single feather, but it's enough to have me visualising another opportunity sometime in the future ;^)

This is going to be my last post in the Avian forum for the next 10 days or so, as on Monday morning I'm off to Sabah, Borneo once again to see if I can bring back with me a better selection of quality images than I was able to last November. All being well, you'll get to see some of those later this month … and perhaps even beyond :^)

Critique and comments always welcome :^)