Lovely set....you have exemplified the theme perfectly.

I prefer the version without the mark. Gold star for you !

Cracking light John

Lovely weather and pictures...enjoy

Looking at ebay sales it seems 4 have sold in the last 4 months at £63/97/111/210 ( or equivalent)

It is priced on the low side. I bought mine in 2007 for £60

Yes safety first.

For autofocus, i doubt single AF point will work unless the bird sits still for more than a few seconds. Can you set your camera to 9 central AF points ? In AFC mode this should work best.

I guess you are unable to pre-focus if the 5 perches are all different distances from you.

I would suggest exposure is the easiest thing to get right. Is the light falling on each of the 5 perches the same ? If so, then work out in advance what exposure is required by using spot metering to get the branch correctly exposed. This seems to equate well with the bird being exposed right too. having established that you then use manual exposure and do not change it. If the background is going to be overexposed with these settings then underexpose by 1 or 2 stops. You can brighten the bird later in pp. Use the histogram to evaluate your test shots before the bird even appears.

Amazing how the structure retains integrity over the centuries.

If that is what you produce I say bring on more bad weather and lockdowns (well maybe not the latter)