The Reed Bunting That Got Away

Okay.

So you are wondering, why the title?

Yes it is a perfectly good photograph of a female Reed Bunting in front of my mushroom patch on my back lawn.

Okay, he gets a lost a little bit in the back ground. It's a little soft due to a high ISO setting, but it was a bit gloomy.

The reason she got away was just a moment before I took that shot, she was sat on top of the mushrooms!!!!!

My camera decided to focus on nothing and back again before finding it's proper focus! In the time that took, she had jumped down onto the lawn. Soooo .. annoying!

I have no idea how proper professional wildlife photographers deal with that when they are photographing something rare and elusive. Don't get me wrong, I have a very long patience setting. I can sit in that garden hide for hours and not worry, but when something like that gets away, I spend ten minutes cursing and shaking my head!

There is a lot to be said for flying on manual on your camera. I have the confidence to do it sometimes, but even that has come back to haunt me once. I once missed a golden chance of a swan in flight directly at me down at Newport Wetlands. Ironically that day, I was on manual as I was trying to get a shot of a Reed Bunting hiding in the reeds. Of course, you really need auto focus on moving objects. I had a series of perfectly framed, perfectly out of focus shots of a mute swan coming right at me!

Don't even get me started on my resident sparrowhawk ....