This is a pyrrhuloxia, or desert cardinal, landing on a barrel cactus in south Texas. I had placed suet on the cactus -- this is a food for birds made of peanut butter, white lard, flour, and corn meal -- so my photo tour group participants would know where to expect the birds to come. It's easy to get pictures of the birds when they are eating, but it's the flight pictures I want. The problem is these fairly small birds are extremely fast. They are like bullets, and most of the time I strike out. They are in and out of the frame so quickly that my reaction time lags too far behind the movement. This time, I saw the pyrrhuloxia perched on a branch above the cactus, and I pre-focused on the cactus. As soon as the bird took off, I started firing the Canon R5 at 20 fps. Many times birds will land on other objects in the scene -- a rock, a piece of rotting wood, the dirt, etc. This time, though, I was rewarded. However, I only got two frames in the few milliseconds it took for it to land. It's pretty remarkable that birds can negotiate the dozens of very sharp needles on a cactus to get the food I've placed and yet not get hurt. I used an especially fast shutter speed to insure the super fast moving wings were sharp. My settings were 1/4000, f/8, and 2000 ISO. This is cropped about 50%. If I zoom in too tightly, depth of field is so diminished with a 500mm focal length lens that it's hard to maintain critical focus.
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