Kamakura's Birds

Here are a few birds I captured on digital while visiting Kamakura. I didn't really go there with the plan to shoot birds. I just had a 5D mk II and my longest lens was a 70-300L lens, not exactly ideal birding equipment. However I was presented with a few close up opportunities and did the best I could.



Japanese Spotbill Duck


Caught this guy doing a little early morning exercise.

Grey Wagtail

Totally wasn't expecting to see one of these here. This was two stops underexposed since I was in manual mode shooting cherry blossoms against a bright blue sky when this guy and a mate landed in the shadows next to me. I snapped this insurance shot in case they flew away before I could change my settings. It was a good thing to since they did fly away before I could get a second shot.

What I'm most impressed about here is how well the 5D mk II images respond to unkind exposure adjustments in Lightroom 3. This is also heavily cropped too.



Grey Heron



Grey Heron with a meal


For lunch we headed down to the beach with some barbecued chicken on sticks. Well not such a good idea in Japan. Instead of being mobbed by seagulls as you would in Australia, we were assaulted by about 50 Hawks. I had flashbacks of being attacked by magpies as a kid but this time they were bigger, more aggressive and a lot more of them.



Black Kite



Black Kite



As you can see, I could get some really close shots even with only 300mm of reach on full frame camera. This is cropped but both wing tips weren't in the original image so I might as well focus on the facial features.