Goldfinches.

Another grey day,quite a shock after the beautiful day yesterday.  Sunday is always a lazy day for me, the main event of the day was putting milk in the Lodge for a regular client who arrives tomorrow.

I am still lacking in inspiration so I decided after seeing Clickychick's shot of the 20th that I should try for some moving birds.  My natural inclination is to wait until the bird is nicely settled then try for a good clear portrait.  The point being we have masses of Goldfinches visiting the feeding station and cantankerous little beasts they are too.  They are always bickering and pushing one another of the perches.

I had two problems with the shot.  The first was the poor light which meant that to get a reasonably fast shutter speed I had to crank the ISO (I still want to call it ASA) up as high as it would go.  The second was focus, with auto focus if I focussed on the feeder and moved to allow space for the flying bird it re-focussed on the back ground.  I had to resort to manual focus.

Resort to manual focus!!  Come on, for most of my photographic life manual focus was all that was available.  I chose this shot as it shows beautifully the gold in the wings and the lengths they go to to chase each other.