This is a green jay landing on a cactus in south Texas. Birds in flight are one of my favorite subjects in nature, and it's also one of the most challenging. I'm now using the Canon R5 which has eye-tracking capability, and that's indeed an amazing feature. But some birds fly like bullets. So fast and so frustrating! To capture this jay, I prefocused on a point about 3 inches behind the top of the cactus. That way I didn't have to rely on technology to track the 'warp speed' flight of the bird. What I was looking for was the beautiful wing spread usually seen when birds alight on a perch. At 20 frames per second, I had a decent chance to capture what I envisioned. Many of the shots were throw-aways, of course, but in one morning session I was able to capture 6 flight images I like. My settings were manual exposure mode, 1/3200, f/11, and auto ISO. The ISO turned out to be 3200, and I used a 400mm focal length. This image is cropped about 20%.
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