Sony A9 III A9III + 300GM with a water bird

[AlphaWorld]

Sorry, folks - I don't know what this bird is (if you know, please enlighten me!).

I visited a park around a public dam (part of my city'e water supply) yesterday. The park around the dam is supposed to be a haven for parrots of many kinds. I didn't see them, but I certainly heard them (some parrots are really loud!). Problem is they were mostly staying in the trees (it was fairly hot).

But as I reached the end of the dam wall, I noticed a lone wading bird in the shallow water on the spillway (the dam was fairly full, but not spilling). I shot quite a few images of the bird, but it was fairly the small in the frame. I'm still learning about using a longer prime, and it took me several minutes to think "Oh, I have a 1.4x and a 2x in my bag!" - I grabbed the 2x, and started putting it on. Of course, that's when the bird flew away (so no in-flight shots ).

I thought you might be interested in this though. The A9III in Animal / Bird AF (default settings for the various sub-settings) had no trouble at all locking onto the bird, and the 100% crop (with no tweaking apart from a lift of 0.2 in exposure, and no post-sharpening, despite the A9III having an AA filter) is rather sharp. I know I should expect that level of performance from this combination, but it's nice to see!

f/2.8, 1/8000 (it was a near cloudless sky), ISO 250.

Full frame

100%

It may sound silly, but after all the chat about "24Mpixels is too few for cropping!" (and I'm guilty of saying things like that, too), looking at that crop makes me want to repudiate that point of view entirely.

This is just the first shot I opened. If I find a better example, I'll post it.

 

[Unframed Dave]

Not my neck of the woods, but I'd say white faced heron. It's very heron like and it has a white face.

 

[AlphaWorld]

Not my neck of the woods, but I'd say white faced heron. It's very heron like and it has a white face.

I looked it up - looks exactly like that. Yay! Now I know.

 

[AlphaWorld]

Another day, another water bird, but same lens and camera. This time I was closer.

I believe this is a juvenile Great Egret - beak is yellow, legs are black (but lighter at the tops) - happy to be corrected!

Shot at f/4, 1/2000, ISO 3200, but no noise filtering. Image is very slightly cropped from 4000 to 3965, then scaled to 2000 to fit.

 

[Unframed Dave]

Another possibility would be non breeding cattle egret. Size is a big aid to identification.

 

[AlphaWorld]

Same small lake (same green/brown water), but a very different beastie:

This is a Gippsland Water Dragon - very long toes! I had wondered how he got to that isolated rock, but he demonstrated how a minute later - they swim well (but with only their head out of water, so the photos don't look good!)

Shot at f/4, 1/2000, ISO 1600.

First a shot at 100% (he just fits into 2000 x 1333).

and then the image with a bit more around the dragon (no hobbits or dwarves, though!)

This camera and lens is comfortably cropping to 2000 x 1333 - that's one third of the width and one third of the height of the frame I shot. I take back everything I ever said about 24Mpixel not supporting cropping!

 

[AlphaWorld]

Another possibility would be non breeding cattle egret. Size is a big aid to identification.

could be, but the description of the cattle egret says "short neck", and this one looks long.

I eliminated the Little Egret by beak colour.

Identifying birds is tough!

At least I'm fairly confident it's an egret! Well, probably...

 

[Unframed Dave]

could be, but the description of the cattle egret says "short neck", and this one looks long.

I eliminated the Little Egret by beak colour.

Identifying birds is tough!

At least I'm fairly confident it's an egret! Well, probably...

Definitely, maybe!