West Coast Park Kingfishers 12 Mar 2015

Today, I was contemplating if I should get another camera with superfast auto-focusing and a long focal range just so that I can take super-sharp photos of the birds that I have the good fortune of seeing when I walk the parks. I decided that the only way to stop that urge to buy another camera is to take what I already have - my Sony camera with the 20x zoom - and see if I can still milk the kind of quality that I crave for in my bird photos. This morning I was in luck as I came across a pair of kingfishers that, unlike all those that I had encountered previously, were unafraid of me and did not fly away to the safety of tall trees that are always a distance away from me.

The very first kingfisher caught a big, fat caterpillar and watched by its partner, it thrashed the caterpillar till it stopped wriggling and then proceeded to swallow it bit by bit till it was no more. I thought that was the end of the show but the kingfishers did not fly far away as they usually do. Instead they flit from tree to tree on the low branches and that was good enough for me to take good shots of them using the maximum zoom of my camera. One of the other kingfisher repeated the performance by catching a similar juicy caterpillar. I was no doubt, pleased as punch at the end of the photo shoot.

As you can see from the following photos, the kingfishers were beautifully caught with my Sony camera. Verdict: I can live with what I have for another year. Goodbye IT fair.