Butter-butt

Last night I spent a little time as the sun was setting with my resident yellow-rumped warbler. It generally hangs around a water drip that I set up in the yard along with several ruby-crowned kinglets. The lighting was pretty tough but I managed to pull out these shots during the few minutes that I had.

Greg

Greg,

Are they still as hyperactive as they are in sping up in the north? I have taken far too many YRWA images that are just a blur :)

These are nice images, I especially like the second image!

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Originally Posted by paulnj

Greg,

Are they still as hyperactive as they are in sping up in the north? I have taken far too many YRWA images that are just a blur :)

These are nice images, I especially like the second image!

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I never see just one and they are hardly still enought to focus. These shots remind me that I need to start using a tripod.

Paul,

Yes, they are very hyperactive down here. I think I took about 200 shots just to get maybe 10 or so decent ones. It doesn’t help that the light is pretty low in the trees where they like to hang out. I was shooting at ISO 800 just to get a 1/160 sec shutter speed which is generally too slow to stop these little guys. These birds are a challenge but at least they are pretty common so you generally get lots of tries.

Lava,

I find tripods to be both a blessing and a curse. While they certainly help keep the camera shake down they really inhibit maneuverability. For these shots a tripod was definitely a help as the shutter speeds were just so slow that hand-holding the shots would have been exceedingly difficult. My strategy here was to just sit under the trees behind a small wooden gate and wait for the birds to come into view. At first I was just using the 500 lens alone but I found that the maximum magnification I was able to get was not very good so I later mounted a 35mm kenko extension tube and was able to get the results you see here. With the 35mm tube I can pretty much fill the frame with one of these little guys.

Greg