Teensy Tiny Theropod

"If gifted with these qualities, and he studies his subject for years, and devotes his lifetime to it with indomitable perseverance, he will succeed, and may make great improvements; if he wants any of these qualities, he will assuredly fail."

- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

I've been wanting to get a decent photo of one of these tiny wee dinosaurs (a Striated Thornbill) for ages now. They're to be found all over the place: flitting between trees and in the undergrowth. They don't seem to mind being rather close to people, and chitter about apparently heedless of me clumping about trying to get a photo. ;-)

As they are only 10cm long however, it's no surprise that - even when they're quite close - my 18-42 mm lens just did not cut it. The 45-200 though...

We went today to Wentworth Falls and had a wander in the bush. My 4 year old lad was absolutely brilliant, and went with me quite a way down towards one of the falls - but I stopped when the way became too steep, and he was getting tired already. He was great though.

Anyway, while I did lug my tripod down and take some long(ish) exposures of the little bit of falls we got to, I was most keen to get a shot of birds. I failed. Then we got home, and my wife came in from the back to tell me there were little birds in all the trees. I went creeping about in the back yard but didn't get anything, then noticed that there really were a lot of them spending a fair bit of time in our Japanese Maple. I ended up going back up onto the deck and just standing there waiting. After not very long, this little one popped into view and I snatched a few shots.

This is at 200mm (400mm equivalent), and the tree's probably 10' from the deck, and I still cropped it a bit. These really are tiny tiny birds. You can see a couple of ladybirds at its feet (lunch, perhaps?) which should give some scale.

It's definitely better viewed large, given how tiny is the bird. ;-)

In Filterstorm on my iPad I sharpened the thornbill and ladybirds a touch, pulled down the luminance curve slightly on everything except the thornbill, and increased the saturation on the ladybirds. ;-)