Friday, March 12, 2010

Landing techniques in birds

I spent a bit of time at Clumber Park on the way to Spalding and attempted pictures of the birds in flight and landing on the lake. The various techniques used by the birds depends very much on the shape of the feet. The Canada Geese used their large webbed feet like water skies and were very elegant as they came into land. The Moorhen's long toes without webs cut into the water so they generally use the technique of running very fast across the surface.
The light was far from perfect so I intend to revisit the topic on another occasion.







The composite of the swan landing is for Phil just to show it is not just airplanes that sometimes do a double bounce landing (click on the image and it is large enough to make out the impressive belly flop).

2 comments:

Ian Wilson said...

Love the swans! :-)

Was this taken with the new 1D, and if so what was the frame rate? The belly-flop can't have lasted for very long...

Ann Miles said...

It was taken with the 1D on the lower frame rate - not sure what that is. I was shooting at 1/1000th second, which was not fast enough for many of the flying bird pictures but swans do land fairly slowly!

Ann Miles Photography - My Favourite Images of the Past10 years or so