As I mentioned in one of my first posts here, this year has been a great year for me photography wise. I have been so blessed to capitalize on some rare sightings of birds. This image is from one of those occasions. Here in Missouri, Painted Buntings are very rare. Southern Missouri has more sightings, but even there, it is uncommon to see them.
A learned of a sighting 2 hours from my home. One night I could not sleep and decided I would drive over and see if I could locate this bird. I just jumped in the truck in the wee hours of the morning, never thinking of looking at the weather, etc... Well about 30 miles before my destination, I could see lightining dancing all across the sky and on the radio, severe storm warnings were being announced. GREAT...drive all this way to sit in the truck and watch it rain, and that is exactly what I did. I got to the area of the sighting and just waited for the storms to pass. They did about 2 hours or so later, but still I had overcast skies, which I was fine with.
It did not take long for me to find this male Painted Bunting. Soon as the storms lifted and and the winds picked up, I saw him flying along a tree line, stopping here and there to sing, and sing he did. I set up along this tree line, at one end, and hoped he would visit the tree I had in front of me at minimum focus distance for my 600VR.
Soon my hopes were realized and to make a long story shorter...16gb of images and 4 hours later... I had more than enough full frame shots of this bird. The over cast allowed the brillant colors to show, as at the end of the day, the sun did come out and the light on these bright feathers really were tough to control. This is one from a series of images I think are my best from that day. Sorry for the long rambling post, but the story I think is important. This was a first for me.
Taken with a D300, 600VR, f/5.6, ISO 400, 1/250 SS, Full Frame
The feather detail is amazing when printed big or if you zoom in on the full size file...sorry this web version does not show that.








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