Monday, April 5, 2010

At last, some pictures of the American Woodcock on his singing ground


I had been trekking down to the woodcock's display stage in a nearby clearing almost every evening hoping to get a picture while the light was still adequate, thus giving me a window of about 7 minutes. I was lucky last night as he landed just a few feet from me....


......but then walked away rapidly and stopped about 6 feet off where he began turning slowly sending his  peents in every direction. 


I used an ISO setting of 3200 and an exposure of 1/60 sec at f/5.6 for the first picture with flash. The subsequent pictures where taken at 1/5 - 1/13  sec. without flash. I am surprised I didn't get more movement artifact for which I credit the image stabilization provided by my lens.

7 comments:

  1. how cool is that!!! great shots! I still haven't heard or seen our resident peeeenter yet.
    JoAnne

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  2. It's cool that you got that bird--I've never seen one, and I hear they're really secretive. Good work!

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  3. Those are amazing pictures at that shutter speed. You must have steady hands.

    I'm always hoping to catch up with this species but I only have one shot from 10 years ago.

    Nicely done, Harold

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  4. Hi Hilke,
    Cool you managed to see it again and get some pictures.... I like to run (well try to get let's say) after difficult species. This is a big challenge and i love that... Well done on this one!

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  5. Thanks for all your comments! It was a challenging experience and I learned a lot.

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  6. Congrats - not always easy to find in the evening light much less photo. I've had no luck with either around my home.

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