Looks like WordPress have put the skids under my basic blogging style.
From now on it seems I have to work with ‘upmarket’, ‘ubeaut’ ‘user friendly’ styles and blocks.
All I wanted was somewhere to put text and photos.
Does not augur well for birdsaspoetry.com on this server.
Whinge over.
We soon became aware of working with the Kingfishers as they fed the young that the light was only really useful on the nesting site for about 45 minutes in the early morning, after that the sunlight slipped behind the river gums and we were going to be hampered by slow shutter speeds and high iso.
It’s been awhile since I lugged large electronic flash about on to a site for photographs, but loaded up each morning with a couple of units, a Better Beamer flash extender, and some connecting cables and I setup to get a little flash fill and also keep the shutter speeds high. No tech explanation, but the Nikon system’s use of flash was why we originally bought into the system. Oh, yeah and a bunch of manual focus lenses we were going to use, and now only have one of those left, and its been in the garage box for years! 🙂
High (about a 1 and 1/2 metre up) and to the left gave the most ‘natural’ effect, following the sunlight. But in the end I settled on high (about 1 metre) and to the right as giving me a slightly better colour rendition and better looking fill of the shadows.
As the weeks went by, the different types of food they delivered ranged from small bugs and centipedes, skinks, crustaceans, and every so often small fish.
This is a collection of about 3 weeks of images from that time. It’s just a handful of some of the opportunities we shared with the birds.
Enjoy
Sacred Kingfishers are not normally great ‘fishers’, mostly working on land based prey, but this pair seemed to make an exception from time to time 
All sort of food seemed destined to be turned into young Kingfishers 
The hazards of feeding growing young. You put it in one end, it comes out the other. This young one had backed up to the hole just as uber arrived. 
Crickets and Grasshoppers came from the mown grasses on the local golfclub 
Small eye peeking out into the world. The entrance is a bit cramped by an lump of wood. 
This is pretty much a week or so before flight. They were able to access the food much more easily as they grew. 
Skink supper 
Stuffing a spider into a waiting beak.
Birds as Poetry —— Just because I WANDER - --doesn't mean I'm LOST 
A fabulous series of images, David! Wonderful to see. Interesting to see a fish amongst the deliveries!
(not a fan of how many sites change how things are done – under the guise of improvement – it usually isn’t)
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Well I’m definitely not a fan of this change. Its not to my benefit, but rather their marketing dept. So they can sell more bells and whistles to a dwindling market. (Blogs aren’t 1990s anymore!!! )
I’ve been avoiding learning the new as the old was still available. But not it seems its manage on the new or die.
Should have been able to put it all together in around 30 mins. Took most of the afternoon, early evening, and I’m still to work out how to spell and grammar check.
Time to look at Squarespace or even Blogger. I think.
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How beautiful are your captures David ! To see the care and devotion of the parent to that little one, it is inspiring. This nest has certainly provided an excellent study for you and your wife. I just love how you capture the colour of this bird so well, and the action so flawlessly. The Sacred and Forest Kingfisher, unlike the Azure which feeds mainly from the river, do enjoy a variety of non aquatic prey. As for your WordPress problem which many of us more mature uses have had to negotiate, I continue to use the Classic style, which I am able to choose either one or the other and even pass from one or the other, To do so put in your WordPress blog site URL …com/wp-admin/ and operate from this page. Each time you go in to work on your post choose Posts > under the post heading click Classic Editor. It is important when starting a new post to click the arrow next to Start new and the drop down box will give you the option to choose. I sometimes go back and forth between both methods. I have been learning to write code more lately which has been challenging but helpful for formatting my website. You probably already know this stuff, but just thought I would share in case you didn’t. We are getting deluged with rain at present. Have a great week 🙂
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Hello Ashley,
Thanks for that. We had about 6 weeks opportunity with this pair and their young so its been a bit easier to pick the highlight shots from the sets.
RE WordPress. I think they have taken the access to the Classic out of the admin dropdown box. Or at least so for me.
Had a bit more time today, and there is a “Classic’ Block, which can function as a text editor much the same as previously although it is itself a Block, but photos can’t be embedded, they have to go to their own block, and it seems the ability to add ‘link to image file’ has also been removed, and I use that so the images can be enlarged.
I just didn’t want to spend days relearning. However its not the total loss I was anticipating.
We’ll see
Good luck
Hope the rain doesn’t do to much damage.
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What a yummy collection of images it is! – exclude the one-in-the lifetime capture of the cannon shot, please. Interesting to know that you’ve been using flashlights.
I’m glad you haven’t given up on blogging, despite all the irritations.
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All Good Adam,
We sat with the birds for a couple of hours at a time, so eventually got into the swing of the expulsion event. Because of the small size of the hole, the tiny birds had to move about a bit to get a ‘clear’ shot. 🙂
Flash has been part of our bread and butter work for many years. Back to filum days.
I generally abandoned working with it in the field for birds. Mostly because it can rob the subtly of tone and colour. And besides it’s another thing to lug about.
However it seemed perfect for this location for a number of reasons. The tricky part is being able to get above the limit of 1/250th shutter speed on the D500. Nikon solved that so many years back and was one of the reasons we went down the Nikon gear path.
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