Chaffess

The forecast was for torrential rain later on today, so I did the few jobs that I needed to outside first thing, and then retired inside to bake a gluten free Christmas Cake.  One of the members of our family is coeliac so I have to undertake this process with some care.  Before the ingredients can even be mixed the kitchen and the oven need to have potential sources of gluten contamination removed.  I'm not a big fan of cleaning the oven so this is at least a useful spur for getting that job done.

Hours later and while it has been very, very dark, with heavy brooding clouds, the torrential rain has yet to make its appearance.  I shouldn't complain really at least I've managed to get this shot of a female chaffinch to blip.  I'd put the teleconverter onto the long lens as a bit of an experiment, to see how it would manage.  I've used support for the lens, I don't think I could have kept lens still enough to keep the target framed centrally without some degree of blur otherwise.  The lens (with teleconverter added) is wide open at f9.  I might just have been able to get a sharp shot at a lower shutter speed, but at 1120mm I find that I need a reasonably fast shutter speed to avoid loss of acuity.

When all is said and done, its a picture of a small bird standing still while, sheltering under a bush on a dull day, but I do like the background, which I've needed to do very little to, other than to denoise.