Published via Ecency

Stellar's Jays

All the Corvid Crazy wrapped up in a beautiful Blue package.
This is also my entry for the Show Me A Photo Contest Round #120
This week was another Free Theam

Hello everyone and Welcome to my post, today I'm bringing you some images of a Steller's Jay.
This has to be one of my favorite Feathered Friends to visit the yard in the last couple of years. At first they were a little quiet and shy(they were nesting), but this year they seem to be ..... BOLD and more than a little devious >=)

Before I start, a bit about the gear.
My new Rig for Birding and Action photography.

This is the Canon 7D Mark 2, 1.6 crop sensor with battery grip, attached to that is my Sigma 150mm-600mm C supper zoom telephoto lens( 1.6 crop sensor makes that a 240mm-960mm lens) and that rig is mounted on my new gimble head for the tripod.
I also accuired a Canon 7D Mark 1 with battery grip as well, it was used to take the images of the Mark 2 =)

For the last couple of months I've been getting to know this camera and I LOVE IT =).
This rig will burst at 10 RAW frames a second with around a 17 image buffer, if your shooting JPEG It will burst at 10 per second until the card is full or it runs out of battery power because JPEG can't fill the buffer .
Oh good lord !! The amount of images I generate with this rig it almost absurd. If I go out for 3 or 4 hours I'll come home with 1000 to 1500 images on the card....
DO you know how long it takes to go through 1500 images ??!?? and I've been shooting almost every day for the last couple months.

So without further delay I give you the Steller's Jay

I was going through the image files pulling out Jays and realized I have about 2000 images of them..... O.o
So I decided to start with the oldest shots from early spring and spread the reat out over several future posts.

The one imaged here is feeding on suet debris(penut crunch) the woodpecker knocked loose, they will feed from the suet feeder every once in a wile but they usually roll in with the woodpeckers and let them do the work

I think this one is a female as I've seen the other one that flies with her take and offer her food as a mating gift. I can tell them apart from the patch of light gray feathers under the beak that the other doesn't have.

After policing up the penut crunch she's off to the trees.

I have tons of shots of the same pose.... 10 frames per second lol..
so I tried to pick out the images that showed a nice pose or action in them

Above is a front shot showing off the blue and white raceing stripes going up the crest

I've been trying to get fly offs/ins and in flight shots so I've been running shutter speeds from 1/2000 to 1/5000 of a second depending on the size and speed of the bird

Almost got that one but she flew behind the branch on the next frame and the auto focus went for the branch and left the bird in soft focus and obscured

She's back a few minutes later perched on the Pear Tree

It was a mixed bag of light this day, ranging from dark cloudy,bright overcast to full sun so I'm having to adjust the triangle (SS, Apiture,ISO) constantly as I've gone to full manual mode on the camera these days with nothing on automatic.

Sometime I think my lens....<,< is shooting soft but then I start pulling tack sharp images from the groupe and realize it's the shakey old farts fault not the lens so I bought a gimble head. lol

These were some of my favorite images of the day, I couldn't decide on the one above or below for my entry into the SMAP 120, so I ended up flipping a coin. The bottom image won the toss. lol

Over the next few posts I'll tell you more about this wounderful bird and some of the corvid webs they weave.

Almost got another fly off.... almost.
This time she launched out of frame, down I think lol
At 960mm you can loose track fairly easy. I'll back off to wider frame when I'm going for action

That brings us to the end of todays post but fear not I have many more images of these beauties coming up for your enjoyment.
So stay tuned and I'll see you all next time on Feathered Friends

Note: Today is my birthday so please forgive any spelling, punctuation etc.
I'm a bit impaired =) cough cough

Habe a Great Weekend Everyone !!

Ooops almost forgot.
Tagging @corvidae for corvid post =)