Posted by Steve Balke on December 21, 2009 at 8:57 PM
I just returned from a one week vacation at Grand Cayman (Cayman Islands, West Indies). It is a great place for nature photography. Even in my brief stay, I had a wonderful guided tour of a the Mastic Trail, a very well known nature trail there, by Stuart Mailer a Field Officer of the National Trust responsible for the trail. I also so enjoyed the Gov. Michael Gore Bird Sanctuary. However, I found that I could find birds (and some interesting lizards) even in the extensive open areas around a local shopping center (Camana Bay: a great place for birder husbands who don’t want to shop!). This series of images is of a Bananaquit (Coereba flaveola) who was enjoying the flowers, encountering a competing bee and was taken near our accommodations about an hour before leaving for home! This type of bird is very common in the Grand Cayman and feeds on insects, fruits and flower nectar (according to Bradley and Ray-Millet (“Birds of the Cayman Islands”, 1995) they obtain the nectar through the petals). In this first image, bird and bee are eye to eye.
Posted by Steve Balke on December 21, 2009 at 8:58 PM
In this second image the bee has decided to head for the flower despite the presence of the bird.
Posted by Steve Balke on December 21, 2009 at 9:02 PM
In this third image, no bee is visible but what appears to be bee legs can be seen in the bananaquit’s beak.
Techs on these images: EOS 7D, EF100-400mm: 400mm, ISO 1600, 1/1000s, f/8.0, first two images: cropped to 6.4 MP; third image cropped to 0.7 MP to show evidence for bee disppearance (it shows obvious effects of overcropping too!). Noise reduction and sharpening applied to all three images.
Posted by Luke Ormand on December 21, 2009 at 9:30 PM
Awesome series - the 7D certainly performs on catching the action - too bad you weren't closer
- Luke
Posted by bill meikle on December 21, 2009 at 10:30 PM
I'm a great fan of bananaquits! Nice series Steve.
Posted by John Tobias on December 22, 2009 at 9:59 AM
Discussion
8 repliesTechs on these images: EOS 7D, EF100-400mm: 400mm, ISO 1600, 1/1000s, f/8.0, first two images: cropped to 6.4 MP; third image cropped to 0.7 MP to show evidence for bee disppearance (it shows obvious effects of overcropping too!). Noise reduction and sharpening applied to all three images.
- Luke
A great series showing some very interesting behavior, well done!