This photo was taken in Sept. 2009 with my old 70-300 (now replace with an L lense). The Downey was sitting below my bird feeder, hence the rather messy surroundings. I started snapping at a distance and moved a bit closer for each additional frame until I got this which is full frame at 300 mm cropped to 4x5. Rather strange behavior for a somewhat flight bird to let me get so close. Anyhow I stood around and watched for a while I started to worry it might be injured. After several minutes the little thing moved around a bit and seemed to get it's bearings and then all of a sudden took off with a good burst of steam.
Now I have two ideas as to what caused this behavior:
1. It bumped it's head on something above the bird feeder and was just stunned or
2. It had visited the grape vines in the area, partook on one that had fermented somewhat and was drunk.
What do you think?
Other techs: 1/320sec, f5.6, iso 200
Comments
2 commentsRon Huff
I think it is entirely possible that the bird hit something and was stunned for a few moments. I used to have that happen in my garden in VA. The scairest episode for me was when a Cooper's Hawk slammed into my siding when it was chasing a snaller bird. It took the hawk a little while to get over that.
For me this bird is way too tight in the frame. It needs space around it. I'm also not sure your focus had locked on because the image looks soft all the way around. That could also be from movement and your very slow shutter speed.