On a recent visit to Coromandel, my cousin and I went walk about in a bush. Usually we have the goal of photographing the birds in the bush but this time we walked to the end of the track and almost back again before we even saw a bird! It was a juvenile fantail and was happy to flutter about in front of us, that is until it caught the moth.
Then it started doing things I have never seen a fantail do before. It started feeding on the moth, with the wings obviously being the tastiest part. To do this, it had to take the moth from its beak and hold it in one foot while it nibbled away at the wings. We were totally unprepared for this to happen so fast, so the camera settings were not optimal and we didn’t have time to change them.
This whole sequence of images was all over in a couple of minutes, reinforcing my belief that to be a nature photographer, you just need to be in the right place at the right time. A little skill with a camera is also useful 😉 The quality of these images is not great but considering the situation we were in, I feel the story they tell is far more important than how sharp they are. I hope you enjoy the story as much as we did.
