Birds in Flight

Today is yet another Saturday where rain or threat of rain has kept me off my bike. This has been a rainy spring as 11 out of the last 15 weekends have had some kind of rain. Hopefully I will be able to get a ride in tomorrow. 

While I sit inside today I have had time to process some photos of some birds in flight I took down at the Edwin B. Forsythe bird sanctuary.  It's a quick hour drive from where I live and usually worth the trip as there are always a lot of birds there feeding in the marsh. This time there weren't as many herons or egrets as usual but there were a lot of terns flying by the road and managed to get a good shot of one in flight as shown in the top of the post. 

There was also an osprey hovering over the road. There are 3 or 4 osprey nest in the sanctuary but this is the first time I saw one flying around. Click on the picture if you want to see it up close. Since it is a slow flying bird I was able to get it in perfect focus and the lighting was good. 

For some reason there were a lot of turtles walking around so I had to be careful not to run over them. 

There are always seagulls and I manage to capture one with a crab in its mouth. 

 

I just wish the lighting was better as the colors are washed out. With my camera on rapid fire mode I took a lot of pictures most of them not worth showing but shooting a lot of photos is the only way to get a good photo of rapid moving wildlife. I am improving my technique so am getting a better ratio of keepers but there is still a good amount of luck and timing involved. 

This picture of a red winged black bird was mostly luck as I was just taking a picture of it sitting on a guard rail when it took off. Luckily my camera kept it in focus and because of was shooting at a high shutter speed it came out pretty sharp. These birds fly really fast so these are not birds that are easy to track in flight. 

I still have room for improvement but enjoy the challenge of this type of photography so will keep trying until I get it right.