A quail gives a quizzical backward glance from a branch near Neck Point. Canon EOS 7D EF 70-300 at 300mm f/5.6 1/400 ISO 640
I was walking out to Neck Point in Nanaimo when I heard a rustling in the thick undergrowth. I stopped and stood still for a moment and suddenly some movement caught my eye on the branch above my head. Normally if I am walking around with both a wide angle and telephoto lens I will have the telephoto on my camera. I figure that if a beautiful picture requiring a wide angle presents itself if is most likely to be a landscape that is not going to move, however, if I see something that requires a telephoto, like some wildlife, it is most likely not going to wait around for me to change lenses so I had better be ready. On this day, that thinking paid off. The quail was up on the branch but moving around a fair bit so I got it in frame quickly and squeezed off a bunch of photos. They were all fairly standard bird in a tree images and I was hoping for something that would express a little of the bird’s personality. Suddenly it turned away from me as though it were going to jump from the branch and just before it did it looked back towards me. I love the curve of it’s head, the curious eye contact and the pretentiously comical feather sprouting from the top of it’s head. I wasn’t happy with in the image were how bright the branch was so I burned it in then reduced highlights in Aperture. I also wish I had the Photoshop skills to remove the smaller branch that crosses the bird’s legs and the dark leaf in front of the large branch but overall I am pretty happy with the image.
-Russell Berg