Today started out seriously foggy, and ended up seriously smoggy, so these are all pics from last weekend. A decade and a bit ago when I lived in Durban I used to lament the absence of discernable seasons, but Cape Town has no such problem. There's a serious chill in the air in the early mornings and evenings, and in this part of the world there are even enough deciduous exotics to give the landscape a hint of orange:
I've very recently decoupled my cameras' auto-focus function from the shutter button and moved it to the dedicated AF-On button under my right thumb. That puts you in control of when the lens refocuses and avoids a lot of unnecessary focus-hunting which can be hugely beneficial for bird photographers when you're following a little bird flitting through the bushes or hopping through the undergrowth. It certainly helped with this Cape Robin-Chat:
Ultimately I'm pretty sure I'll stick with the change, but for now it's still not second nature. I think it's going to take a bunch of practice before muscle memory takes over and I can trust my thumb to do the focus thinking for me. In the meantime, I'm feeling the pain mostly in those quick spur of the moment shots where my focus has been a bit off, like this could-have-been-stunning Red-winged Starling:
and occasionally I've just totally failed to focus before hitting the shutter, as with this Egyptian Goose dislodging a shower of beautifully backlit water droplets. Aarrgh!
While I was with the geese I caught this little guy mouthing off to his fellow goslings. I think I would have preferred the shot without the sibling in front, but there's still something about his attitude that I really enjoyed:
It wasn't only the geese that benefitted from back-lighting. These Erica glandulosa were glowing like little out of season Christmas lights:
Fortunately the light wasn't all harsh, and when I was facing the right way there was stunning blue sky to be had as a backdrop. This vaguely Triffidesque beast is a Balloon Milkweed:
One of the great things about Kirstenbosch is that there's pretty much always something in fruit or flower or seed to keep the birds happy. I didn't note the variety of grass, but this one's seeds are currently a magnet for little seedeaters like these Swee Waxbills (first Mr Swee, then Mrs Swee):
And sometimes background flowers just provide bokeh of an unexpected hue, although I'm not sure that purple realy works as a backdrop for this Karoo Prinia:
Heading up the hill towards the Erica gardens we came across a Cape Spurfowl crossing the lawn. I find their strongly patterned plumage tends to present a challenge for auto-focus (Guineafowl are even worse) but I seem to have nailed it this time. I like the attitude in the slightly raised crest and the spur prominently on display. That actually helps me accept their renaming from Francolins to Spurfowl - there's nothing subtle about that weapon.
One of the birds that's quite easy to get close to at Kirstenbosch is the African Dusky Flycatcher. For a couple of seconds at a time, between flights to earn their family name, they're happy to sit relatively close to you, but you have to act fast if you want to get the shot. By the time I'd repositioned myself by the couple of centimetres it would have taken to get a more consistently bright or dim background this youngster (note the still prominently yellow gape) had flitted off. If I'd been alone I might have waited for him to return, but that's generally not an option when I'm accompanied by my own hatchlings.
This adult landed right next to me. So close, in fact, that I think I had to step back to get to the Bigma's minimum focussing distance. This is a very nearly full frame shot:
and if you look at this original size crop from an adjacent exposure you can see the lawn, sky, me, and even my shadow reflected in the bird's eye. This bird's only about 13cm long, and I'd guess that its eye diameter is around 4 or 5mm, so even on a tiny smartphone screen this is likely to be larger than life:
There were also quite a few Forest Canaries about, but none of them well positioned. The first of these two was high above me against a bright sky, while the second stayed close for quite a while, but the only time it emerged into the open was for a few seconds atop this super-bright white rock.
And, finally, here's a sub-adult male Orange-breasted Sunbird, with just tiny flecks of the iridescence that'll make him such a pain to photograph when he's older:
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