Acorns away
Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata), Green Cay Wetlands, Boynton Beach, Florida, October 11, 2009, 6:50 am, by Manjesh Lingamurthy
Published: December 28, 2009
 Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata), by Manjesh Lingamurthy
He knows that Blue Jays store food in caches and that they often fly set routes between their larders and food-gathering places. So when he saw the jay above at the Green Cay Wetlands in Boynton Beach, Florida, he sensed opportunity.
Positioning himself so the bird would fly before and above him while the early-morning sun shone behind him, bathing the jay in warm light, he steadied himself by spreading his legs to shoulder width and turning to shoot sideways.
The resulting photo illustrates just how industrious a Blue Jay can be. Two acorns can be seen — one in the mouth and another between the mandibles — and if you look just below the bill, you’ll notice that the jay’s crop is bulging. Since the pouch can easily accommodate two to three acorns, Lingamurthy’s bird might be carrying as many as five acorns in all. |
Equipment used
Camera: Nikon D300, handheld, MB-D10 battery grip attached to shoot at 8fps
Lens: Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 AF-S VR lens with Nikon TC-14E 1.4x teleconverter
Settings: ISO 400, 1/1600, f/4, aperture priority, center-weighted metering, white balance set to cloudy, continuous high-speed release mode
Focus mode: Continuous-servo AF mode selected to 51 points dynamic-area AF
Light: Early morning
Format: RAW converted to JPEG
Adjustments: Cropped 60-70%. Sharpened with unsharp mask and saturation increased using Adobe Photoshop CS4
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Meet the photographer
PASSIONATE BIRDER: Birder’s World subscriber Manjesh Lingamurthy, pictured here with his Nikon D300 with battery grip, tripod, and camouflage lens, loves to take photos of birds in flight. He is a doctor of hematology and medical oncology at the Michael and Dianne Bienes Comprehensive Cancer Center at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, just south of the Green Cay Wetlands. |