After Chris Rimmer’s post about the massive phoebe fallout at Paradise Park in Windsor, I decided to go there yesterday morning and see if I could find a few phoebes to photograph. It turns out they weren’t hard to find. The ones in the corn stubble were a bit hard to approach. However the ones near the dyke at the northwestern arm of Lake Runnemede seemed to be more approachable. So that is where I spent most of my time.
It’s not hard to get a photo of a perched phoebe.
It is much harder to capture them in flight. So naturally that is what I tried to do. The light was low and it drizzled a bit on and off. I wound up using ISO 1600 and 3200 for all of my shots. Even at those high ISOs I often got motion blur in the wings. Actually, I don’t mind a little motion blur. It shows action better than a frozen shot.
Of course it is easier to photograph a bird in motion if you know where they’re going to land.
The most challenging photos were when the phoebes were darting and weaving across the open water trying to snatch insects out of the air.
Here is the sequence of a phoebe landing and taking off repeatedly within less than two minutes.
And here are some phoebes hawking insects over the lake.
I hope I’ll be able to post more photos on my blog within a few days from my morning at Paradise Park, including palm warbler, golden-crowned kinglet, and blue-winged teal. If you wish, you can subscribe to the blog to get email notifications when I post. I certainly do not post all my blogs on birding listserves.