I went out to my blind a few days ago in the early afternoon when it was nice and hot hoping for some unusual birds. I didn’t have any luck that way, but the Willow flycatcher came by again and seemed to be having problems with the drip. I don’t think it was trying to drink from it-just happened to perch directly under it.
Sony a6500, FE200-600 @ 600 mm, tripod with ball head and Sidekick mount, f/8, 1/500, iso 1600, manual exposure. Processed in LR & PS CC. Cropped to 4470x3832. Removed another perch from the upper right corner and painted over some distracting spots in the background. The light was fairly harsh, so I did some adjustments to highlights and shadows in the RAW editor to reduce that effect a bit.
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Ha! Terrific capture, Dennis! Timing is perfect and detail is awesome. I like the bird positioned between the two hardscapes, looking up. Really sweet comp!
@peter My little ground pool. This species gets amazingly wet just diving in and popping back out. They’re not in more than a couple of tenths of a second (I managed to get a blurry sequence once, but enough to time it).
An excellent and funny behavioral shot, Dennis! Great detail and exposure. The composition works very well also. Judging by all the wet feathers I would agree with Paul that it was probably using the drips to bathe!
