Watch The Birdie.

This morning I was out and about at one of the Springfest activities here in the park.  It was due to run from 10am till noon and I got there at 11:20....and they were packing up !  Gotta love how they define time here in sunny Buttonwood Bay.  Maybe they put their watches foward an hour 3 days early !

Seeing as I was down by the lake and the pier with my camera anyway, I decided to try and take some photos of birds in flight - something I've never been much good at.  Today wasn't much better.

It didn't help that the bird in question was nothing special but, bless it, it tried it's best to be helpful.  I found it perched happily on the pier and I got quite close before it got spooked and flew away.  It would make a  pass over the edge of the lake and land back on the pier further away from me and as it did so, I took a series of photos.  Then I'd walk up to it again to get it to fly off. We did this a few times until we both got a bit fed up with this 'dance' and I left it alone. I'd taken about 20 shots.

Sadly most of them weren't worth keeping - mostly because the bird was flying in front of a distracting background of parked cars and boats tied up nearby.  These are the best of the rest and it shows me how far I have to go and how much patience one needs to get good photos of birds in flight.

Those 2 show what I mean about the distracting background but the bird was flying very slow as it knew it wasn't going far and was heading back to the pier. The last one is a bit better but I really wanted a shot taken with the bird against the clear blue sky. Maybe next time.

The photos actually look a bit better if you click to enlarge them - it kinda helps to make the bird stand out more from the background.