White Browed Wagtail

On that Sunday I was strolling near Bondel trying to capture some birds.. It was raining heavily that day and I was unable to find mach except this bird who was searching for insects in a nearby puddle. After seeing me it went near a pile of Granite rocks nearby. This gave me a nice opportunity to shoot him in a nice evening light. Here are some of the shots which I took with Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM on Canon EOS 7D with Canon EF 1.4x II Extender. All shots were taken handheld at 1/500th of second with f/4.0 and ISO 200.

The White-browed Wagtail or Large Pied Wagtail (Motacilla maderaspatensis) is a medium-sized bird and is the largest member of the wagtail family. They are conspicuously patterned with black above and white below, a prominent white brow, shoulder stripe and outer tail feathers. They are common in small water bodies and have adapted to urban environments where they often nest on roof tops. The specific name is derived from the city of Madras which is now renamed as Chennai.

White Browed Wagtail in a puddle

The White-browed Wagtail is the largest species of wagtail at 21 cm length. It is a slender bird, with the characteristic long, constantly wagging tail of its genus. It has black upperparts, head and breast, with a white supercilium and large white wingbar. Unlike White Wagtails it never has white on the forehead. The rest of the underparts are white. The female has the black less intense than in the male. Juveniles are like the females brown-grey where the adult is black.

The White-browed Wagtail is a resident breeder in India and is endemic to the Indian subcontinent. It is rare in the higher altitude regions but has been seen in Ladakh on the edge of the Tibetan plateau. In most of India it is found below 1000 m but in southern India it goes up into the hills up to 2200 m.

White Browed Wagtail

These wagtails have adapted well to urban habitats and is often found perched on overhead water storages in residential buildings. Usually seen in pairs or small groups near open water. They call often especially in the mornings and are active like most other wagtails. They will perch on the ground as well as on wires or on buildings. The song is long and loud with many different notes. The usual call is a wheezy “wheech”. They can fly fairly rapidly for long distances and they fly with a bounding (dipping and rising) flight pattern and have been recorded to travel at the speed of about 40 km/h.

Looking Straight

Like other wagtails, this species is insectivorous. Nestlings were mainly fed orthopterans, caterpillars and spiders. Stayphylinid beetles and pentatomid bugs have also been recorded in their diet. Local name for wagtails in India is dhobin meaning washerwoman.

Malabar Whistling Thrush

As there was a brief break from incessant downpour I wanted to get as much of photo opportunity as possible. I, with my family and my friends Dijiraj Nair and Shivashankar Nayak headed to Kudremukh National Park. I will show you few of the great shots we took in subsequent blogs. Afternoon following lunch at Kudremukh town we spotted a bold Malabar Whistling Thrush (Myophonus horsfieldii) sitting on a old metal gate and singing. While we all clicked at it using our big lenses it was singing without any hesitation and giving us great poses.

The Malabar Whistling Thrush (Myophonus horsfieldii) is a whistling thrush in the thrush family Turdidae. They are also known locally by the name of Whistling Schoolboy for the whistling calls that they make at dawn that have a very human quality. The species is a resident in the Western Ghats and associated hills of peninsular India including central India and parts of the Eastern Ghats.

Malabar Whistling Thrush On a old gate

This large thrush appears blackish with shiny patches of blue on the forehead and shoulders. The blue becomes visible only in oblique lighting. The bill and legs are black. The sexes are indistinguishable and juveniles are more brownish and lack the blue forehead.

The species is found all along the Western Ghats south of the Surat Dangs with some populations in Mt. Abu, Rajasthan. They are also found along the Satpura range to northwestern Orissa.

Frontal View of Malabar Whistling Thrush

Malabar Whistling Thrushes are usually found in dark undergrowth and dense riverine forest. Half an our later we spotted another bird in the middle of the town and another female bird bathing nearby. We had great and extremely close look. I was trying Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 L IS USM with Canon EF 1.4x II Extender on Canon EOS 7D. Excitement of seeing bird at a such a close range, I had forgotten to check the auto focus setting of Canon EOS 7D. AI servo tracking sensitivity was turned too high. This resulted in the camera hunting focus when I try to focus in AI servo mode. Because of this I could get only few shots which were clearly in focus. I realized this mistake only the next day after seeing the photos. The “fast” tracking sensitivity setting means that when you’re shooting low, the camera will bounce a lot between the target and the background.

Quote taken from the canon site http://cpn.canon-europe.com/content/education/technical/eos_7D_custom_functions_explained.do

“The focus tracking sensitivity refers to how the camera responds and switches to another subject during focus tracking. This response sensitivity refers to how long the camera waits before switching to a new target subject when the current target subject escapes an AF point. It doesn’t adjust how quickly the autofocus tracks.”

Shiva who was equipped with Canon EF 500mm f/4 L IS USM Lens and much more experience in bird photography than me has captured the same birds excellently. Check his photos here – Malabar whistling thrush #1, Profile of whistler.., Portrait of whistler.. and Video of Whistler’s call. You can also check Diji’s capture using Canon EF 300mm f/4.0 L IS USM here.

Malabar Whistling Thrush On a old gate

They are omnivorous, eating a wide range of insects, crabs,frogs, earthworms and berries. They are usually seen singly or in pairs. This is a bold species and is often found close to human habitation. The male sings its varied and melodious whistling song from trees during summer. They may song for long early at dawn but at other times of the day they often utter sharp single or two note whistles. They were once popular as cage birds, with the ability to learn entire tunes. They bathe frequently in water usually in the mornings and evenings but at midday during hot weather.

Female Malabar Whistling Thrush bathing in a stream nearby

Female Common Mormon - 100mm macro

After I got my Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM lens, I wanted to use it as single lens for both birding as well as macro. I have used Canon EF 300mm f/4.0L IS USM successfully in the past and got pretty good result. It was a great macro lens but the reach for bird photography was not there as its performance 1.4x teleconverter was average. 2.0x convertor was bad. f/2.8 lens was great with both these convertors and remained as sharp as original. This prompted me to try it as single all in one lens.

As a test I tried shooting female Common Mormon Butterfly (Papilio polytes)sitting on rose leaves during rain. You can check the details about the butterfly in article Male Common Mormon Butterfly.

The photo on the top shows my presently favored approach. It is shot using Canon EOS 5D Mark II with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS II USM using ExpoImaging Ray Flash Adapter on Canon Speedlite 580EX II Flash. The exposure using flash ring adapter gave a nice even light and ISO 200 with aperture of F/14 produced nice deep (in macro terms) depth of field. I was working nearly a feet away from the butterfly. Some insects get intimidated by such proximity of humans and it is difficult to capture them. If you notice the flash also made the background dark as the ambient light was very low. This can help to isolate your subject from cluttered background. But it also produces an unnatural look to the photo. Some shy critters will not allow you to approach this close.

Female Common Mormon - 300mm f/2.8

Here in my second photo I used Canon EOS 7D with Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM Lens on Canon EF 1.4x II Extender. The light was pretty low as it was raining heavily. So I used ISO 3200 to get hand holdable speed of 1/180th of second exposure at f/4 aperture. This setup gave me a sufficient working distance of around 3 meters from butterfly. I was standing under shade of roof and shooting this butterfly which was protecting my gear from rain. The safe distance allows you to get those shy type of critters easily.

There is price to pay for this comfort (I am not talking about the price of the lens here ) The lens is heavy, depth of field is very shallow. As you can see at f/4 aperture which was possible under the existing light butterflies antennae are out of focus even though the eyes are. Since the camera is far off I can’t use the flash and ring adapter to light up also. I can now use the naked Canon Speedlite 580EX II Flash to throw as much light at the subject. Light reaching subject will be low. I can use either Better Beamer flash extender to concentrate the light on the butterfly or I can keep the flash off camera close to the subject. In the field this is difficult to achieve with fast moving subjects.

As you can see there is no easy shortcut to take for macro photography. Dedicated macro lens has advantages and several plus points. Using such an lens can achieve a great magnification and closeup shot of the subject. In the future blogs let us see how we can use extension tubes to alter minimum focusing distance and thus increasing magnification.