NUTHATCH TAKING FLIGHT

Photographing nuthatches in flight is challenging. Nuthatches tend to fly away and immediately drop like a stone when leaving a bird feeder. To get them to fl...
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Photographing nuthatches in flight is challenging. Nuthatches tend to fly away and immediately drop like a stone when leaving a bird feeder. To get them to fly broadside and momentarily upward I placed a bird feeder tray next to a planter full of geraniums over which the nuthatches would fly. A shutter speed of 2000th of a second seems to be about right to freeze their bodies in space while creating a sense of motion by blurring the more distant feathers. The feather blurring was caused by the limited depth of field at an aperture setting of f 5.6 coupled with the sheer speed of their outermost wing feathers.
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