Great Tit & Coal Tit squabble

[Jonathan Ashton]

Tripod canon 7D Canon 500mm f4 L IS ISO 400-0.67 1/1000 f7.1.

Shot taken from portable garden hide, I placed bait at the end of the perch so that as the queues built up there was a little squabble every now and then. The action was very brief and very very fast! All C&C welcome.

[Randy Stout]

Jonathan:

Very nice colors, exposure, perch, action.
DOF is always a challenge with this time of image, and the right birds head is fairly soft on my monitor.
Wish the left birds head was turned a bit more towards the other bird as well.

Sounds like you will be able to keep working this setup and I look forward to more.

Cheers

Randy

[Arthur Morris]

Neat interaction and ditto Randy on the head of the right hand birds. What is strange is that the eye of the Coal Tit and the tail of the larger bird are both in relatively sharp focus..... This leads me to think that problem with the head of the bird on the right might be one of subject movement rather than d-o-f.

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

nice colors, exposure, perch, action!

[Bill Dix]

Great interaction, with nice perch and background. Good comments above. What did you use for bait on the perch?

[Pieter de Waal]

Love the action and setting with fruit all else has been said.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks everyone for the C&C - much appreciated, the bait was mixed bird seed but I think I should have stayed with sunflower seed becasue this is what they go for - most of the other seed ends up on the ground!

[Geraldo Hofmann]

Thanks everyone for the C&C - much appreciated, the bait was mixed bird seed but I think I should have stayed with sunflower seed becasue this is what they go for - most of the other seed ends up on the ground!

Tits will mainly go for seeds which offer a high amount of fat like the sunflower-seeds you mentioned they also like hemp-seeds - which sometime due to their size are easier to hide in the picture- the sam is true for pine-seeds or niger- or sesam-seeds.

The mixed bird seeds often contain large amount of millet and oat ... which are loaded with carbohydrates but nearly no fat... Species feeding on them would normaly feed on gass-seeds examples are many buntings (old world), sparrows, and Greenfinches (also they prefer fat in the winter time)


last but not least I like this iamge and I agree the less sharp head is very likely movement but I would be happy with this shot... Congrats

Cheers
Geraldo currently WIRRAL-Moreton

[Randy Stout]

Artie:

I puzzled over the out of focus head, and thought about motion blur, but at 1/1000 sec. would have thought it not likely. Wings yes, head?
Interesting. The bird on the right is larger, and his head is behind the perch, while the left birds head on the left is anterior to the perch, or at least parallel. Perhaps the larger size of the right bird makes us think his head is closer than the left bird, when in fact it is further away?

Cheers

Randy

Randy

[Jonathan Ashton]

My guess it is a DOF issue.

[Arthur Morris]

The tail of the bird on the right is in sharp focus, as is the eye of the bird on the left. The eye of the bird on the left is clearly past the plane of the head of the bird on the right. Therefore the unsharp head of the right hand bird cannot be a depth of field issue unless my line of reasoning is incorrect but it seems pretty straightforward....

[Jonathan Ashton]

Maybe it's just my reasoning Artie, I acknowledge you have far more experience than I, but I agree the tail of the Great Tit is sharp as is the head of the Coal Tit, this to me means the head of the Great Tit is further back (i.e. away from the camera back than is it's tail or the head of the Coal Tit and that is why the Great Tit head is not sharp. (??)

[Arthur Morris]

On a second look you may very well be right Jon. It did look as if the Coal Tit were much farther away from us than the big bird but that might be an illusion :o

[Ben_Sadd]

Of course it can not be ruled out that motion blur could be the culprit, but I am in agreement with Jonathan's locations of the birds relative to each other. In these positions, a bird the size of a Great Tit would have its head past the plane of the head of the Coal Tit. To me this is also demonstrated by the head angles. Of course though the mind can play tricks, and often does :). Jonathan, is the perch parallel to the image sensor?

[Jonathan Ashton]

The perch was at a slight angle and the right hand side is just a little nearer the camera than the left (this is to encourage the magic head turn or at least start with a very slight turn.)