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I was sitting quietly on a stone wall under a tree early this morning looking across a grassy meadow and enjoying a glorious morning. The sky was blue with just a few wispy clouds and a warm breeze blew. There was nobody else around - just as I like it!
Suddenly about a hundred yards away I could see a bird flying towards me, I realised it was a kestrel, a bird which has become quite scarce in the Brecon Beacons, so I was interested immediately, curious to see what would happen, usually as soon as raptors see you they veer away and fly off, but this bird kept on coming.
I got ready to focus my camera and as it approached I fired a few shots.



But on it came,

I fired some more shots.




But on it came again.

This was really unusual because Kestrels are quite spooky birds.
Then the unbelievable happened I couldn't shoot any more frames because it was too near and I just expected it to fly over the top of the tree above me and disappear, but it didn't - well not at once. Incredibly it perched fifteen feet away on a branch and just stared at me inquisitively for what seemed about twenty seconds and then it flew off.



Fortunately I had my Canon 100-500 lens with me which allowed me to zoom right out so I could frame this lovely bird. I was really surprised by this behaviour but it was a lovely experience.

Canon R6 Mk2 + Canon Rf 100-500 - Handheld.

The Clouded Yellow is a scarce and difficult to find butterfly in the Brecon Beacons and to come across one feeding on Knapweed this morning in glorious sunshine was a lovely find for Susan and myself. These beautiful butterflies brighten up anyone's morning.



Canon R5 + Canon Rf100-500 lens.

I was out walking this morning along the River Usk which is quite low, allowing Dippers and Grey Wagtails to hunt insects over and under the water. I casually came across a family party of Spotted Flycatchers consisting of about six birds a lovely sight. I tucked myself away under some willows and watched them, adults and juveniles together. The young birds were quite adept at hunting flying insects, they had obviously been taught well.
I could see them perching on isolated branches before launching into flight at passing prey. I thought this particular situation might be where I could try the 'Pre Capture' mode on my Canon R6 MK2. I have this feature pre programmed into the camera so it's just a press of a button to activate it, I waited for some time until a bird perched in a suitable position - and this is preferably an uncluttered background and an open space for the bird to fly into.
Using full frame mode to give a wider field of view, I waited...





It does work up to a point, as catching fast and unpredictable little birds like these in flight, using conventional methods would be quite difficult.

In previous blog posts I outlined how I manage to photograph wildlife in flight. I for one would never try to tell people how to achieve this, instead I prefer to just outline the methods I use, and this may, or may not, help somebody in their photographic endeavours.
Undoubtably modern mirrorless camera have made this process slightly easier, and shots are appearing now that would have been more or less unachievable previously. Two particular features are the 'Eye Tracking' (of birds in particular) where the camera's focussing system locks onto a bird's eye and providing a photographer can retain the bird in the camera viewfinder the eye will be kept sharp. This is such an improvement over DSLR cameras with which you had to just hope the focussing system would find something to 'Lock' onto.
However, this system does not work so efficiently with some insects e.g. moths, butterflies and bees. This is because of their wing patterns and bodies which are often adorned with colourful geometric shapes which can obviously confuse the camera's focusing system. The tendency is for the camera's autofocus to jump around looking for the 'Eye' to track.

This is where 'Double Back Button Focussing' is critical;

If you assign one button to activate 'Eye Tracking' focus, and another button to activate single point focussing then when the former is struggling to achieve focus the latter will focus the system wherever the single point is located. In short your thumb cam be poised over the button which activates 'Single Point' focussing with your index finger on the shutter button. Then inevitably when the insect moves you can refocus without fear of activating the shutter when focus hasn't been achieved and then fire the shutter at the appropriate 'In Focus' moment.

The second feature is Canon's 'Pre Capture' mode, this is achieved when the shutter button is half pressed allowing the camera to continually record the images seen until the shutter button is then fully depressed when the last half a second of the images it has been recording are downloaded to the camera. - in effect going back in time.

These two modes when used in combination can achieve good results.

To illustrate;
An insect like a Bee is crawling around a flower collecting pollen and 'Pre Capture is activated. 'Eye Tracking' is also activated but is not suitable because the Bee is continually going out of focus because of its movement and the system is therefore continually 'Hunting' to achieve focus. Activating single point focus with your thumb on the appropriate back button allows you to continually keep up with the insect, focussing as it moves simply by touching said button. Then with your index finger half depressing the shutter button which is recording images continually, the shutter can be finally depressed with the bee in focus.
If you are shooting at twenty frames/sec obviously ten images will be committed to the camera and these are the frames you would have almost certainly missed, unless you are possessed with the reactions of a fighter pilot, which most are not.

Now come the composition problems, because to achieve a sharp pleasing image you need to avoid cluttered backgrounds and this is solved by, if possible, choosing a flower that is isolated with no obstacles in the background. This is not always possible but is always preferable, because to have an OOF stem e.g. in your image is distracting and can spoil what otherwise would be a nice shot.
Secondly, again if possible, I chose a situation, when the Bee in this case, flies into the air, it will ideally fly into a clear space and importantly this must be provided in the viewfinder by the photographer!
Sometimes a Bee will take off at an angle but sometimes it will take off in the same focal plane as the flower and this is a bonus because then both are sharp.

Having in theory achieved the above then very high shutter speeds are paramount to 'Freeze the action'
It might seem involved but with practice it can become second nature, and is well worth the effort.



Shooting info;
Common Carder Bee examining Verbena flowers.
Canon R6Mk2
Canon EF 100mm f2.8 Macro Lens
6400/sec - ISO 2000 - F3.5

Butterflies numbers are low near where I live again this year. Although our garden is full of plants supposedly attractive to insects there's not much happening. Today is hot and sunny here and so I went for a look at an area of Knapweed which is attractive to butterflies and although I saw Holly Blue, Common Blue, Small, Green Veined and Large Whites, a Red Admiral and plenty of Meadow Browns the larger coloured butterflies such as Comma, Peacock, Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell and Painted lady remain scarce.
The one painted lady seen was persistently paying attention to the Knapweed plant and therefore gave me a chance to use Canon's 'Pre Capture' mode again. It's still far from easy manipulating the situation for a shot because you have to isolate your subject from cluttered backgrounds or the effect is compromised.
This involves waiting for your subject to land on a suitable flower, preferably above the other flowers and then wait for take-off. However, wind is then a problem because it ruins focus by moving the subject, so patience is needed....



Canon R6 MK2 + Canon RF 100-500 f7.1 lens.

5000/sec - 2000 ISO - 238mm

House Martins are quick, period! Frustratingly they also fly in a multidirectional manner, this may seem obvious, as all birds do over a period of time. However, birds like Swallows, Martins and Swifts do this very quickly and frequently. These erratic flight patterns make them very difficult to follow in a photographer's camera viewfinder. To have any success of photographing them in flight you have to use a particular modus operandi. It is very difficult indeed, almost impossible, without a huge slice of luck, just to point a lens and capture a sharp image.
To illustrate - one afternoon in Lesvos this spring, it had got far too hot to go birding so I was relaxing on the balcony of my hotel room just sipping a chilled glass of the very good and cheap (even better) local wine. I could see some Barn Swallows flying low and skimming the swimming pool, drinking water - a nice sight.
Another man staying at the hotel had obviously seen this avian spectacle and decided to position himself on a pool-side chair thinking he would try and capture them in flight, this was all very good. However, being side-on to these very fast flying birds as they came in presented a significant problem, and I thought that he had no chance whatsoever of any success. You just can't do it, by the time he had pointed his lens at an incoming bird and waited to achieve focus the bird was already twenty feet past him. He tried this method for about twenty minutes and gave up, and anybody would have experienced the same problem.
To have any chance of success you have to step back for a wider perspective which gives you an idea of the birds flight direction. Then you have more time to achieve focus by tracking the flight and if you can obtain focus early, which is critical, then for two or three seconds you have a chance of getting a few sharp images.

Back home in the Brecon Beacons there is a stone maintenance tower on a local reservoir, and House Martins have nested there for as long as I can recall. I was there yesterday on a cloudy morning watching these lovely birds flying back and fore their nests. I decided to have a try at capturing them in flight using my Canon R6 Mk2 and a Canon 100-500 f7.1 lens. I used the bare lens and the full frame camera setting, this gave me the widest perspective possible, this is important because to use the 1.6 crop factor in the camera and possibly a 1.4 tele converter would not only slow the lens down but give a much narrower field of view, making it much more difficult to track these birds.
I watched one particular bird's flight path, it's no good jumping from bird to bird, I obtained focus early on and just kept track of it until it flew nearer. Using 'back button focussing' is fundamentally important in this situation because if shooting conventionally (using the shutter button to focus and then fire the shutter) you will inevitably fire the shutter during tracking when focus hasn't been achieved. I just depressed the pre-programmed back button to track the bird's flightpath until it was in focus, and when it came nearer I fired the shutter button, thereby only firing when the bird was in focus.











This is the only method that works for me.

Shooting Info;

Canon R6 Mk2 + Canon RF100-500 f7.1 lens.

F7.1 / 5000 sec / iso 2000 / @ 20FPS

The Rufous Scrub Robin, at least this is the current iteration, is a small chat which favours hot and dry habitats with dense scrubby bushes. Originally known as a Rufous Bush Chat, then Rufous Bush Robin and now known as the above. They usually arrive on Lesvos in May and immediately take up territory.
This one particular bird took am obvious fancy, for whatever reasons, to an old derelict building and if you waited in your vehicle it would come and perch in various positions and sing for a mate. One of its favourite perches was a rusty old chain link fence - don't try to think why, it defies logic.
I waited one morning in my vehicle, it was quiet and sure enough here it comes to its favoured perch. It wasn't the most photogenic situation but it gave very good views in a nice light.







Sometimes birds do strange things.

Another bird that can be found across the island of Lesvos. They can be difficult to see or alternatively they will stand out in the open. They are undoubtably less difficult to see than the Purple Heron. Nevertheless they can also blend in with the foliage, and this bird was in roughly the same area as the Purple Heron. They are a great deal smaller of course, which is an advantage, and so they can be easily missed.

In Lesvos if you have the time and sit quietly by a water course, sooner or later something will appear, and that's just what happened when this juvenile Night Heron came out of the undergrowth looking for food, particularly froglets, which were in abundance in this small stream.



These birds are quite spooky - but with patience...

These birds are very arboreal, they can be heard infrequently but they are usually difficult to see well and this proved to be the case.
We had one occasion when we could see six birds flying into a tree and sometimes perching out. They were always distant but just seeing them is a bonus.

A secretive and very wary bird, the Purple Heron hides in undergrowth near water feeding unobtrusively. If caught out in the open they will fly away immediately if that is their best option, however, if they are found in a situation that they think compromises their safety by flying, their next course of action is to freeze and remain motionless relying on their natural camouflage.
Early one morning we were driving past a local lake and we saw a bird standing on a steep banking alongside a water filled ditch. I slowed the car right down and as described above it froze solid because we were only twenty feet away, it was too close to us for it to fly up and away - it was just too big.
It stood there intently staring at us as I poked my little zoon lens out of the car window, but it remained perfectly still. I took a few shots and drove on - the closest encounter with a Purple Heron by far.
As we were parking up we met a man who was staying at our hotel and he was trying to take images of wildlife and by his own admission he was a beginner. Nothing wrong with that we all had to start somewhere. I don't mind helping people out so I gave him details exactly where the Purple Heron was located.
He left his car and walked along the track. later on I asked him if he had any luck, he hadn't. He told me he must have walked right past the bird because when he looked back after walking along said track he could now see the bird, but after turning around and trying to walk back nearer, it flew away.



A combination of not looking closely enough and the bird's natural camouflage.

These charismatic birds don't dive into water for food like the 'White Terns' instead they not only skim over water for their food but fly over fields hunting for insets etc. They can appear seemingly out of nowhere sometimes in quite large flocks, and then disappear just as quickly.



They are hauntingly beautiful in appearance and so delicate in flight.

In a previous blog I outlined my purchase of a Canon R6 Mk2 as a backup camera to my Canon R5. I don’t spend money unless I do the research and I’m very pleased to say it performed beyond expectations, especially for birds in flight. I never thought it would be able to track extremely fast moving birds. However, that theory was dispelled when one afternoon while we were standing on an old stone bridge looking out over a small river outlet, something literally ‘Zoomed’ very low over our heads from behind and then another and another etc. All we heard was the faint whistle of their wings and then it became apparent – Alpine Swifts, these are proper speed merchants and would be the ultimate test for birds in flight photography.



I was really taken aback when the Canon R6 Mk2 that I had coupled with the Canon RF 100-500 zoom lens started to lock onto these aerial acrobats, it was amazing to witness.



Once focus was acquired if I could keep up with the flight of these birds then shots could be achieved!! If anyone is in doubt about buying this small lightweight camera (for birds in flight in particular) then don’t be - it is superb.


Alpine Swift.

Susan and I have just arrived back from a three week birding trip to the northern Aegean island of Lesvos. Spectacular falls of birds occurred during our time there, in particular Red-footed Falcons, European Rollers and Purple Herons.
Things will take a bit longer this time because I have had to finally admit that my current PC cannot cope with the sheer volume and size of the files that modern 'Mirrorless' cameras produce, so as I type a new high powered machine dedicated to processing photographs is being built for me and should be ready sometime next week.


European Bee Eater.

Every image from the trip was shot 'Handheld' with a Canon Rf 100-500 lens.

After posting the reasons for purchasing this camera and what I intended to use it for, mainly a back-up camera, to say I'm pleased is an understatement. It's always a nervous time when you get to finally put a camera through its paces, but it has passed with flying colours. Prior to visiting Lesvos this year I wondered about the camera's tracking capabilities but I needn't have done. I have posted some images of difficult birds I have photographed to support this, it's no good just theorizing about these things you have to have images to back these theories up.
The other main concern was about whether or not the media cards and the camera's buffer memory would be able to cope with fast shooting e.g. sustained twenty frames per second bursts. I can now confirm that I never hit the Camera's buffer limit and also the cards read and wrote the data without any hiatus in my shooting.
For everyday wildlife photography I can't see any problems in the above mentioned areas and everyday photography is what the majority of people, me included, do.
Bee Eaters are fast moving and erratic birds in flight and one afternoon I just sat in my vehicle near to where these lovely birds were hunting insects. They were flying from all directions and angles but I was still able to get them in flight a number of times. If I was precise I tracked them for three or four seconds at twenty fps before they went out of view and this was no problem for this camera. The media cards also read and wrote the data in a few seconds.


European Bee Eater.

Spotted Redshanks are one of my favourite waders and unfortunately I rarely get to see them in summer plumage because they don't breed in the UK. In Lesvos you do get opportunities to see certain waders in summer plumage Curlew Sandpiper and Little Stint etc.
Photographic opportunities for Spotted Redshanks are a great deal more infrequent so when two dropped in for a couple of days I had to try and photograph them, they really are rather lovely.

One of my favourite birds on the island of Lesvos, where they inhabit areas containing water. These lovely gentle birds spend their time there wading around looking for frogs etc. They are very shy and we surprised this bird near the confluence of two streams in a beautiful and remote setting near an old monastery, and like the people who previously lived there, they like peace and quiet, and fortunately for us as it wheeled up and flew away it came quite close. Their beautiful colouration isn't perceived at distance, they just look black, but up close........



Shot with a Canon R6 mk2 and a Canon EF 70-200 f4 lens.

You don't always need a big lens to get a shot!

The Lesser Grey Shrike is one of the four shrikes that can be seen on the island of Lesvos. They are the least numerous of the four and without doubt the most difficult to photograph. They are very easily spooked and are highly unapproachable.
My second statement was exemplified with no birds seen in the first week. I was beginning to think we would miss seeing them altogether which would have been disappointing to say the least. I try and photograph all four shrikes went I’m on the island.
However, one early morning we had travelled over to the west and having stopped the car with the intention of walking along the road checking the trees and bushes for migrants, which can be very rewarding there, there was a Lesser Grey Shrike perched right out in the open, sometimes you can’t make it up. I stayed at the car, it’s no good trying to approach these birds they will fly off immediately. I fired off a few shots and I could see I had some reasonable images. We started to walk and off it flew and disappeared as usual but at least I had something.

One bird that is difficult to get close to is the Great Spotted Cuckoo. This applies to any country they inhabit, they exhibit typical Cuckoo behaviour, and they are intelligent, street-wise and crafty. You have to watch their behaviour and be patient in the extreme.
Susan and I were at a location known for small numbers of these birds but nothing was showing or calling and after an hour we were going to leave, but I said ‘Let’s have a cup of coffee before we go’ We always carry a little travel flask of coffee it’s so convenient. As we were sat there suddenly I saw something out of the the corner of my eye flying from a small bush. Remarkably it was a Great Spotted Cuckoo – the crafty so and so had been there all the time we were there!!
It flew into the bottom of another small bush and just stayed there for ten minutes, but we now knew it was there. However, it started to move and then dropped to the ground no doubt to catch a caterpillar or some sort of insect. Then it started to make its way up to the top of the bush and we could now see it in plain view, what a chance to shoot it. These are elusive birds and opportunities like this don’t come around too often.

I knew they did it but I have never seen it because I have never been able to freeze the action before.



A Common Swift asleep on the wing.

Canon R6 Mk2 / Canon Rf 100/500 - 3200/sec.