Wild Bird Trust photographers of the week

This week I got two pictures included in Wild Bird Trusts Top 25 photographs of the week. They are both taken during my last trip to visit the Golden Eagle up north at Conny Lundströms place in Kalvträsk but this time neither is a photo of the resident Eagles.

The first photo is one I thought about during my first visit in Kalvträsk when I saw how the Eurasian Jay’s were flying back and forth over the site. Many times they flew and landed just in front of the hide and that was a sequence that I wanted to capture.

This is the result.

It is more or less what I wanted even if the contrast between the bird and the snow make the picture a little flat. The light is not optimal and I think the head of this wild bird is a little dark. That is mainly due to the fact that I used a shutter speed as high as 1/4000s. I choosed to use it because I wanted to freeze the action and see how I would feel about the picture.

I think it is a nice picture but I would have loved to have some movement in the wings. The picture looks like a portrait to me even if it´s hard to nail a picture like this. I am happy that I took the picture and next time I will try to lower the shutter to see if I can produce a picture that I like a little more than this.

This second picture the second picture.

This is two Great Spotted Woodpeckers that is playing “king of the hill.” I think this picture is interesting even if the movement is completely frozen. I used the same shutter on this one and this time I think it worked better. That might be due to the snow fall or the snow that is stirred by the Woodpeckers, you need to see the picture in full screen.

I saw this behavior often during the three days in Kalvträsk and I wanted to take at least some good pictures of the action. Woodpeckers tend to always look the same and I wanted to do something different. I did try to get some flight shots, and I might have one or two in store for later, but when I saw the fighting then I switched attention. I think this is a good picture even if I would have loved to get a glint in the eyes on these wild birds but that wasn´t possible due to the blizzard.

Feel free to look at my blog posts from my last trip to Kalvträsk.

Eagle Workshop day 1
Eagle Workshop day 2
Eagle workshop day 3