Pheasants in the snow

I was lucky enough to have these two visit my garden earlier. A bit far away, but some nice photo opportunities and enough feathers left on the ground to stuff a small pillow.....All with K-30 and DA 55-300mm, mostly at 300mm.

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Excellent ! Great sequence - love the action. Pheasants might be as common as muck to some but personally I don't see them that often and from a photographic standpoint love them, they have gorgeous colours when seen up close.

Top set! I like these and similarly rarely see pheasants in the flesh myself. Nice work

Cheers

I'll send you some down, Matt, we have loads around us - more likely to see one in a restaurant in London I'd guess

They are beautiful birds. We would probably appreciate them more if they weren't as common instead of blasting them out the sky in the name of sport.

Excellent shots. We have never had two males in our garden. Usually one male and a couple of females, so we don't get that sort of behaviour.

Excellent sharp shots. Superb lens and a good example
of the advantage of a zoom over a fixed 300mm.

That's very true, certainly in this instance. I daresay the DA* 300mm I passed up in favour of the 55-300mm would have made for much sharper shots, but I doubt I would have got many of them. They were jumping about all over the place and I was constantly having to zoom in and out to frame them.

Add to that the fact that I was leaning some considerable distance out of the bedroom window at the time, the only thing stopping me falling being a foot hooked over a chest of drawers, the additional weight of the DA* might have tipped the balance

Really great set, well done indeed!

I like these

Excellent shots, I bet you're pretty proud of them.

Regards
David

Hi David

Thanks - they came out better than I expected considering I simply dashed upstairs, leaned dangerously out of the window and fired away without giving any thought to settings. Just shows we can overthink things sometimes, as carefully planned shots don't always work!

Sadly my last photos with the K-30 before I sold it which is a shame, but needs must. Camera-less at the moment whilst I make up my mind about a replacement

Excellent set. Another bedroom birder. What do the neighbours think you are up to with the camera at the window?

Luckily we don't have any neighbours for 1/2 mile in that direction One of the advantages and disadvantages of living in the countryside.

Cracking set Chris, quite jealous personally!

Feels churlish to point this out given how good they are, but the white balance is a bit different on the 5th one with regards to the snow, doesn't seem to affect those colours on the Pheasants though!

Yes you're right. I didn't like the 5th one as much. It would have been nice, but it isn't quite as sharp as the others and the WB is out. I just grabbed the camera with WB set to auto - no time to work anything out! Perhaps we should just give credit to the K-30 for getting the WB right on the others!