The Eurasian Jay is a common bird in the UK and a common, colourful member of the Crow family. They are an intelligent, resourceful, bird that will eat a variety of food including nuts, seeds and even other birds and small mammals whenever they get the opportunity. They are well known to cache away food whenever it is abundant and they will store acorns (the seed of oak) in their thousands and then, when the going gets tough in the winter, remember where they hid it and return to retrieve them. Their most attractive feature apart from their perky character, is the blue epaulettes on the wings and they are particularly attractive (to my eyes at least), in flight. I therefore spend a lot of time trying to get good photographs of them in flight whenever the opportunity presents itself.
My plan today was to tempt one of the Jays to fly between two short posts by placing nuts on the top of each one and then to capture an image in flight as the bird flew from one post to the other. I have done this before and found it very successful, however that was in the summertime when the light was much brighter. Today I had to deal with relatively dull conditions and consequently a slower shutter speed on the camera. It says something about the latest Digital SLR cameras that any photographs can be taken at all.
Charles Fleming
Charles Fleming is a wildlife photographer and nature blogger based in South West England. His blog "Wildlife in a Suburban Garden" has more than 1400 entries and a link to his galleries where you can view more than 4000 images from home and abroad, including a gallery of birds of the world featuring photographs of more than 500 species. "My aim is to try and put my readers and viewers intimately close to the subject and to share the thrill of watching and photographing birds and wildlife at close quarters".
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