Sometimes fortune smiles on you and photo ops fall into your lap. When you’re talking about blue tit fledglings, this is in fact almost literal!
Last week my neighbour knocked on the door to let me know that the blue tits they had nesting in the nest box had fledged and the three chicks had made their way into my garden. He was really just warning me to keep an eye out for them and make sure that I didn’t accidentally tread on one or something equally unpleasant.
Sure enough, I looked into the garden and there they were – three beautiful little chicks and mum and dad going bonkers all around the garden taking seed from our feeder and collecting spiders and flies from trees, bushes, plants and under the eaves of the shed.
I sat and watched them and since they were flying around quite happily near my I decided to go and get the camera. I started off with a few stills and then switched to video to try and capture some of the feeding as one or both parents collected food for their young charges. I intermittently switched back to stills as well just to make sure I had some nice shots.
It seemed like a perfect chance to try out the new EF2x Mark III Extender, a full report of which can be found over on the EOS Network site blog. Since they were very tame, I was able to get quite close as well – though while I wanted to get in and do some macro, the welfare of the animal should ALWAYS come first and I instead stayed a few metres back with the 300mm and 2x.
Once I’d got a good range of shots of the chicks and feeding, I set about the parents a little more. They’ve been feeding in our garden over the last few months – it seems they prefer the sunflower hearts to anything else, so we’ve been working our way through kilos of the stuff.
Because the feeder is in use, I decided a bit of flash might be helpful not just in freezing them, but also in trying to get some nicer lighting than nature was providing. I setup to lights, one for the birds on the feeder, and one for the background. In fact, for the feeder shots in the sequence, there is no natural light at all, just flash. If you want to know more about the lighting setup, keep an eye on the EOS Network blog where I’ll write a bit more about it in the next few days.
For now though, here’s a selection of the images from the day.
Have you had any fledglings drop in recently? If so, did you get out and take some pictures or shoot any video?
