Party Crasher

Canon EOS 7D, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM @ 185mm, Aperture Priority @ f/2.8 (1/1000 sec), - 2/3 EV, ISO 400, Handheld, JPEG from RAW, Cropped Minor Amount to Clean Up Edges of Frame

At the first reserve I was staying during my recent trip to South Africa, there was a small patch of open ground that one could overlook from the patio leading to the dining area. In the middle of this there is a bird table, and every morning one of the staff would liberally sprinkle seeds then scatter still more upon the ground; if they hadn't have spread it around on the ground as well there'd surely have been tribal warfare between the birds battling it out for rights to the tabletop!

Obviously this is something they've been doing a while but, other than Pigeons, I've never seen so many birds flocking into one space to eat. As you can see here, Red-Billed Hornbills made up the majority, but a number of Southern Yellow-Billed Hornbills would regularly drop by and, larger than the Red-Bills, acted like ill-mannered party crashers.

Being that there were so many of them and they evidently returned each day, I decided not to take any photos of this flurry of avian activity until I had a picture in my mind of an image that would appear at least a little more unique than most visitors to this place would return home with. It wasn't until the third day that I settled on trying to get a shot with a solitary Yellow-Bill sharply focused surrounded by a sea of Red-Bills, or as close to it as possible.

I was also determined to set the composition through the lens, as opposed to during post-processing, which as you might imagine compounded the challenge what with all the constant movement going on.

Naturally I made more than a few attempts (!) and the birds aren't quite as closely compacted together as I would have liked, and let's not even get into that irritating other Yellow-Bill that just wouldn't move completely out of the frame on the RH side, but for all that I must admit I'm rather pleased with how this one came out.

Real interested to read your thoughts and suggestions though :^)