We are lucky to live close to tidal mudflats of the Bay of Fundy which host 100,000s of Semipalmated Sandpipers every year. The birds are going south and stop for a couple of weeks to feed on mudshrimp. Over that time they double their body mass in preparation for the non-stop flight to South America, which takes them about 4 days. The major flocks have not arrived yet; today we had about 10,000, a few of which you see in this image. I chose this one to post because it shows the birds in many different angles, even some roosting at high tide on the beach, and the water was calm (rare on the Bay of Fundy) so the reflections show up well.
40D, 70-200, 1.4 tc, @185 mm (why use the tc?!)
capture date: Monday, July 28, 2008 9:02:14 AM
exposure program: Aperture Priority
ISO speed: 400
shutter speed: 1/1600
aperture: f5.6
exposure bias: +0.0
metering: Pattern
flash: OFF - Compulsory flash mode
Last edited by John Chardine; 07-29-2008 at 06:57 AM.
Absolutely lovely image. Like the vastness shown in the image & their numbers. Collectively there's nice pattern exhibited by these birds while in flight in this image. Liked the image a lot.
If u get an opportunity, experimenting with slow shutter speeds may be interesting too. Would love to see the result.
TFS.
Hi John,
This works especially well because of the curvature of the flock. I also like the perspective from the sitting ones throughout the entire range of motion all the way till the OOF distant ones.
Hey John, You pushed the button at just the right time on this one. Maybe one of these years I can get on a plane when you let me know that #s are peaking... Best of all: a clean upper edge and a clean lower edge just like we teach!
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
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It would be great to have you up here Artie- 2009?. Numbers are building now. Today we had about 50,000 and we should get the peak this week or early next. It's hard to capture what this looks like in a photograph. This image is just a small part of the flock we had today. The semis are heavily harassed by merlins and peregrines and have little opportunity these days to rest at high tide.
The semis are back!
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