Curious Quail

A quail gives a quizzical backward glance from a branch near Neck Point. Canon EOS 7D EF 70-300 at 300mm f/5.6 1/400 ISO 640

I was walking out to Neck Point in Nanaimo when I heard a rustling in the thick undergrowth.  I stopped and stood still for a moment and suddenly some movement caught my eye on the branch above my head.  Normally if I am walking around with both a wide angle and telephoto lens I will have the telephoto on my camera.  I figure that if a beautiful picture requiring a wide angle presents itself if is most likely to be a landscape that is not going to move, however, if I see something that requires a telephoto, like some wildlife, it is most likely not going to wait around for me to change lenses so I had better be ready.  On this day, that thinking paid off.  The quail was up on the branch but moving around a fair bit so I got it in frame quickly and squeezed off a bunch of photos.  They were all fairly standard bird in a tree images and I was hoping for something that would express a little of the bird’s personality.  Suddenly it turned away from me as though it were going to jump from the branch and just before it did it looked back towards me.  I love the curve of it’s head, the curious eye contact and the pretentiously comical feather sprouting from the top of it’s head.  I wasn’t happy with in the image were how bright the branch was so I burned it in then reduced highlights in Aperture.  I also wish I had the Photoshop skills to remove the smaller branch that crosses the bird’s legs and the dark leaf in front of the large branch but overall I am pretty happy with the image.

-Russell Berg

Screech

These beautiful peacocks in Beacon Hill Park, Victoria, let me get very close. Canon EOS 7D EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 at f/5.6 1/160 ISO 400

The colour of the bird hits me first, it is a blue so blue that it beggars description.  There is an almost incandescent, glowing quality to the blue and it changes colour ever so slightly as the feathers shift, then settle in the sun.  The bird is a riot of outrageous colours and flamboyant form.

I was wandering around Beacon Hill Park and I heard the screech of what I thought was a peacock.  I followed the sound and saw a couple of them sitting in trees beyond a fenced enclosure.  I tried to get a few shots from that distance but nothing was coming out very nicely.  I heard another screech and it was off in a different direction.  As I wondered towards the sound I saw one wandering around on the grass.  I moved in very slowly and began to snap away.  It was fairly early on a Sunday morning so there weren't alot of people around and the peacock seemed very tame.  It let me get quite close.  I was so focused on this bird so much that I didn't even notice the second peacock until it walked right past me within inches of brushing against me.  I spent about 20 minutes photographing the 3 or 4 birds that gathered around me.  It was very cool.  I was using a long lens 300mm so even though the aperture is only f/5.6 the background is thrown out of focus and I was able to get a nice clean background that doesn't distract from the wonderful feathers.

This peacock's stare was so inquisitive. Canon EOS 7D EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 at f/5.6 1/250 ISO 400