The photo we posted in this week’s SkyWatch of a flying American White Pelican has gone down very well, and as the photo was actually one of a series of four I took I thought I would post the others as well (and hopefully not over-egg the pudding in the process).

I took these photos at Charleston Slough, which is part of the Palo Alto Baylands (roughly midway between San Francisco International Airport and San Jose). I was with my great mate Jack Cole chatting with him and a couple of other birders when this particular pelican came over the water towards us and I more or less just lifted the camera and clicked away. One of the joys of carrying a camera around with you is the fact that just occasionally you, the bird, and the light all seem to be ‘just right’ and you get one of those photos that you might actually like enough to hang on your wall (or - which is probably more important - that your partner doesn’t mind having to walk past every day): it does help though to have the camera ‘primed’ so that if the moment happens you’re ready for it.

On this occasion we had of course already seen that there were high numbers of pelicans flying around, and I had deliberately taken a position where I knew the sun would be behind me (shooting into the light will usually give you a silhouette rather than a colour filled image) and where I was fairly sure one of these strangely agile birds might come right over my head. Despite the bright day I had kept the ISO (a measure of the sensitivity of the camera’s imaging sensor to light) high at 640, which in theory meant a higher shooting speed and blur-free photos. My particular camera/lens combination (a Canon 40D and Canon 100-400 L lens) seems to give a generally good depth of field - in effect the area of the photograph from front to back in focus - with the aperture priority (AV) set at a constant 9.0. Selecting for AV also allows the camera to make adjustments for light and shutter speed automatically, which it’s very good at it: because the ISO speed was high these four shots were all taken at 1/2400 second which meant no blurring. (Ramping up the ISO can introduce ‘noise’ into the photo, but the Canon is virtually ‘noise-less’ below an ISO setting of 800, and I can’t really see any in these four pictures.) Lastly as I knew there would be nothing in an open sky to confuse the focussing system (no sticks, branches, reeds, buildings or such getting between the camera and the bird in other words) I was confident that providing I managed to get the bird in the centre of the viewfinder the Canon would do the rest and autofocus sharply.

I was right to be confident, I think, and the result of a little preparation - and a little luck (no-one can make a pelican look so effortless as a pelican itself) - are the photos below…

 

 

 

Updated August 13th:
Not everyone loves pelicans though. Having created the perfect habitat for them by building reservoirs and stocking those reservoirs with fish, some of us are now describing pelicans as being “like a gang of horse thieves” which “get a group…together, circle an area, then go to work.”

And which holier-than-thou and totally environmentally responsible people might be describing pelicans thus…? Find out right here: www.msnbc.msn.com