Found this nest hole next to a cycle path whilst walking the dogs so went home for a camera and hide. In the two and a half hours I spent here this chick only stopped calling for about 10 seconds once every 10 minutes. It was even driving me nuts so what the poor parents were thinking heaven only knows. When fed it took everything offered with a voracity that was frightening to watch and often the adults would stand back and just look at it as if to say "What the hell have we spawned here!?"
500mm
1/160 @ F6.3 iso 640
Light was very low and I had difficulty trying to balance the need for a higher speed to arrest the movement and some depth of field. In the end I had to accept that as the chick was such a voracious eater the actual feeding shots were going to show movement
A nice encounter I'm sure Rob, a little green cast coming in there but I assume that's influenced by the foliage. It may have been possible to boost the ISO a notch to 800 to give you that extra little bit of shutter speed, but you managed well in the circumstances. The leaf in the top RHS pulls my eye a little but some good interaction captured between the birds.
Agree about the leaf should be possible to tone it down/clone it out, this would direct focus solely onto the birds, love it though. Found one of these at the weekend when I was up north and didn't have a hide with me so didn't want to hang around and scare the birds so really jealous, well done.
A good find and a nice record of an endearing event... the result is very nice given the conditions you describe, even though you haven't achieved critical sharpness it is still an image I would love to have on file....
Works well for me. Brett pretty well sums up what I was thinking. Wonder if the oystercatchers outside my bedroom window are related to the youngster, they just peep permanently during the night.
Discussion
7 replies500mm
1/160 @ F6.3 iso 640
Light was very low and I had difficulty trying to balance the need for a higher speed to arrest the movement and some depth of field. In the end I had to accept that as the chick was such a voracious eater the actual feeding shots were going to show movement
Brett
So funny.... Looks like he will leave the nest shortly....
They can be a real menace and pick their parents in the head or eye after they swallowed the food.
Good story and nice shot.
Edwin
Easy to sort out which would make it even better
Ron