Meadow Pippit

My first outing with a 40D earlier last year with the 500mm at a honeypot location in the UK for other species. Everyone else seemed to be shooting Gannets and Guillemots whilst I had gone for a wee trek into the more grassy areas. I saw some small birds flitting around and used my jumper over my head to try and disguise myself a bit (maybe it worked after a while). Anyway I believe the bird is a Meadow Pippit but am prepared to be proved otherwise. I didn't feel over confident with the autofocus as compared with my 1D, but I think the extra crop factor helped produced the shot, not perfect but a nice effort I think, I was trying for a bit of movement on the wings too instead of an entirely sharp shot, which I feel would have tainted the shot IMO.

500mm (1.6 crop - 800mm) f5.6 iso 200

A great capture, with the just the right amount of movement in the wings, IMHO. Perhaps if you could tone down the OOF flower under the right wing it would give more emphasis to the
main subject. A lovely image.

I've been shooting with a 40D for about 3 years and would have shouted the house down if I had got a picture like this. Its a great shot considering the autofocus of the 40D isn't as fast as some of the cameras on the market espcially with small in the frame subjects.

Looks very good,and love the compostion here and the wing spread makes the image for me

To capture such a small bird, in flight, with the 40D is excellent and a credit to your patience. It is good to see a more wider viewpoint, where I feel a lot of us might have been persuaded to crop tighter in. The 'foliage' in the foreground really does help too. Might be tempted to remove the white 'blob' just under the left wing as you view it & crop a fraction off the top, but this is only a personal thought. Nice one Ian

Lovely! I much prefer the wider shots that gove a sense of place, and this one does just that and has a great action capture as well. The relationship of bird to greenery is spot on.

Interestingly I was at a honeypot location in the UK earlier last year and went into the more grassy areas and spotted what I at first thought was an elephant. On closer inspection I saw it had two trunks and I knew something wasn't right, and then discovered it was a bloke with a jersey over his head :-)

Well caught.

Very, very nice. A real 'natural history' image - it imparts so much information about the speices but in a non-'record-shot' way. Lovely.

Cheers,
Chris

Great image and a nice sense of place too. I have been using my 40D a little lately to get the bigger crop factor and I was surprised at how relatively sluggish the AF was compared to my usual 1D .. of course, it all seemed ok at the time!!

Nice shot Ian well caught

any nits covered already

Great shot, good comp and lovely light, well caught.

Hello Ian.

Works for me lovely shot.

Ian,

Outstanding. Usually seen going the other way having exploded up from under your feet! I'd be tempted to lose the oof white bit below the wing. The foreground flowers really add context.

Regards

Jon