Bath time fun...

I went out this morning to the Petone Estuary to see what was happening  and after sitting there in the cold wind for a short while decided the answer was not much at all. There were some black backed gulls picking away at a couple of dead fish, and some red billed gulls playing in the wind currents but not a whole lot else. So I packed up and came home.

Not having my weekend photo fix satisfied, I got creative. I opened the one of the French doors and pulled the curtains – clipping them together creating a makeshift hide for myself and the camera. Then I tossed some bread scraps on the lawn to attract the birds. I was expecting sparrows, starlings, blackbirds and chaffinches and all of them arrived in quick order. What I was not expecting was the waxeyes as they tend to ignore the bread scraps.

These two flew in to see what all the fuss was about with the other birds and found the puddle of water nearby. I guess they decided it was bath time because they had a good play in the water for the next 20 minutes or so.  I got so many great images of the two of them, far too many to put here.

I was also experimenting with my camera settings as I have started shooting the birds on total manual mode. I have found that the big lens has a sweet spot at F8, so I work from there if I can keeping the shutter speed as fast as possible to capture the birds in flight. So far it has been working fine but I really do need a bright day to get the best out of it.