Black Necked Stilt

[Aloicious]

Black Necked Stilt at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

 

[ceeboy14]

These three are much better than the yellow legs and yellow head. Did you change some settings for these shots?

 

[Aloicious]

nope, really similar settings on all the birds from the day, most all the shots were between 1/1000-1/2000, auto ISO ended up around ~200-400, and between f6.7 and f7.1, but the stilts weren't nearly as scared, and were slower moving than the yellowlegs/yellowhead so I wasn't trying to pan quickly and re-establish AF with these. I really blame the 1.7x on it because the AF speed and performance with the bare lens is spectacular, but the whole trip was about testing it with the 1.7 on...

 

[sm4him]

What a cool bird, never saw one of those before! Nice set, I like the first one the best.

 

[Aloicious]

Thanks, yeah, these long legged, long billed shorebirds are really interesting to me, before I started getting into wildlife shooting, I really never really noticed them before...

my goal before the end of the summer is to get a shot of a long billed curlew, those are my favorite of the shorebirds, not really sure why, they just look really neat...

 

[sm4him]

My goal right now is just decent shots of 100 different birds in one year, January to December. I have no idea if I'll actually make it, but it's fun because it keeps me constantly looking for new things. This weekend, I added four or five more to the list, although I haven't gone through my pictures to see if any of them are even decent enough to count. The "first" picture doesn't have to be stellar to count, just has to be easily identifiable as to what kind of bird it is. Then, I start trying to get better and better shots of it--hopefully, at the end of the year, I'll have decent shots of at least 100!

I was also guilty of not paying attention to a lot of the different birds. I've always loved the raptors, and would stop to watch them, along with some of the really colorful songbirds. But other than that, my bird categories were "songbird," "raptor" "duck or goose" "little sandpiper kind of things" "other waterfowl" and so forth...and I didn't generally REALLY stop and watch them. It's really fascinating and addicting--and now, I'm amazed at how OTHER people can just walk right by something like that and not seem to care!

 

[Aloicious]

thats a great goal!

I'd probably benefit from something like that too, especially to help with identification. unfortunately between running my business and my second job that I'm at full time, I really only have 1 day a week that I can go shooting, the past 2 months have been a real drag because the whole week will be great weather and sunshine, then on my day off, rain and snow and dark, then sunshine again until my next day off, over and over and over...next week I've got the rare 2 days off and weather outlook is good, so I'm hoping to get out and shoot some more birds then

 

[HL45]

thats a great goal!

I'd probably benefit from something like that too, especially to help with identification. unfortunately between running my business and my second job that I'm at full time, I really only have 1 day a week that I can go shooting, the past 2 months have been a real drag because the whole week will be great weather and sunshine, then on my day off, rain and snow and dark, then sunshine again until my next day off, over and over and over...next week I've got the rare 2 days off and weather outlook is good, so I'm hoping to get out and shoot some more birds then

Sounds like my life! Congrats on the great shots!