We have seen the Pileated Woodpeckers (PWP) around the house a lot lately. Most of the time we are alerted to their presence by their "wild jungle call." And, more often than not, where you see one, you will also it's mate. Seeing them is one thing, but taking photos of them can be difficult.
The camera wants to focus on every little branch between it and the birds. Those soft blurs in the photo are out-of-focus branches and leaves in front of the woodpeckers. If the camera senses them, the birds quickly go out of focus.
That is the male with the red spot on it's jaw in the upper position. Now that the leaves have filled in, it will be hard enough just spotting them, never mind taking pictures of them.
I knew the male was going to fly. They don't stay in one place too long - especially when they are not actually foraging for food. I had the aperture set on f/8, which I thought might give me enough depth of field to render the bird sharp if I could react fast enough when it took off. It never seems to work out though. The time it took to leave the branch and reach this spot was probably a matter of only thousands of a second. By the time I reacted, he was already almost out of range. I had to stay focused on the branch, however, because if I moved the camera with the bird, it would have focused on the branch in the lower part of the picture and I still would not have gotten a clean photo of the bird. That is the problem with shooting birds in the woods.
Here is the female who hopped up to the spot the male just evacuated.
She also left a moment later and I tried to get her take-off too, but the same thing happened and the result was no better. It is fascinating to see such large woodpeckers. I'm pretty sure they were the model for Woody the Woodpecker. Even as I was posting this, my wife came in and said one of them was close by. I went out and took a few pictures which I'll post tomorrow.
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