Bobwhite quail

[TravelingChick]

This is a species native to the prairies that use to be all throughout this area. My local preserve (Connemara Conservancy) has been working for years on reintroducing this species to their 72-acre Meadow Preserve. This is one of my happy places - if I'm not traveling, this is my go-to spot for photography.

I was excited to see this pair deep in the brush, as it *might* mean we have a nesting pair. Taken handheld while kneeling the brush with the OM1mkii + 15-600 at various focal lengths (around 200ish) and at 12800iso. I used the tiny square and Bird Ai focus and was very surprised at how these came out. Denoise by Dxo.

The pair (male has the white):


Male:



Female:

[antpitta]

Very well captured. If these behave like most other quail species they're invariably quite wary and tough to photograph.

[TravelingChick]

They were hard to photograph because they were tucked back into the thick brush. They didn't seem to be as skittish I thought they should be.

[blackfox]

Super shots Celeste , they may already have eggs in the nest hence they didn’t move to far away from it .

[TravelingChick]

We sure hope so! If we could just convince the dog-walkers to leash their dogs.... we had two birds killed last year by someone's 'good boy.' Infuriating.

[MJ224]

Well caught Celeste, a bit of field craft there as well as the super lens...

[Ian]

You're putting that 150-600 to gret use!

Ian

[Joe_T]

You are getting some very nice shots with birds & coyotes hidden in the grass.

[TravelingChick]

That tiny box focus point is great for situations like this, and I equally love the 'use the entire frame' focus box for BIF.