Birds around my farm

I'm lucky enough to live in the hills behind Strathalbyn with views out to the Lower Lakes and Coorong with the Younghusband Peninsula in the distance.  It's a favourite destination for early morning hot air balloon rides.

It's awesome up here sometimes with Wedge Tailed Eagles and the smaller birds of prey in the skies around almost every day.

More interesting to me are the smaller birds, the wrens, bee eaters and honey eaters that are perpetual motion "machines" living life at 100Kmh every minute of every day.

Photographing them is both fun and challenging, they're restless not giving you the opportunity to compose a shot, so anticipation is the order of the day.

This shot is one of my favourites.  It's not technically brilliant nor is it of any rare or exotic species.  It's a shot of a Gray Fantail (Rhipidura albiscapa) and if you look slightly to the right of the bird, there's a small light coloured spot.

No, it's not dust.  I was watching this bird for a few minutes as it darted around under some shrubs coming in to land on the top of a stake.  It took me some time to get this shot, as I said, it's not technically great but that small, light spec is it's next meal.

The shot was taken late July, under a very gloomy sky while I was dodging rain showers.  The lens is a Canon 100 - 400 telephoto lens, F5.6 with the ISO set at 400. 

We've found some stunning places for bird photography in the Coorong, just south of Menindie on Lake Albert so there's be some posts of pelicans (my wife's favourite birds) and other marine birds over the next few weeks.

DADFAP