Lundy birds in loco motion.

Posted on July 23, 2018

The challenge: Auks in flight. The place: Lundy island.

Some lovely weather, calm. still and plenty of light, helped. I used the XT-2 and 100-400mm with a 1.4x converter, plenty of ISO and plenty of shutter speed. I played with the Fuji AF settings for tracking subjects and using zone area focus I found custom setting 4 gave the highest amount of keepers. (That’s the one recommended for when an object suddenly comes into frame).

The final challenge was the steep, buttress cliffs of the island and of course, the need to remain a respectable distance from nesting birds. Snorkelling near Tibbetts I noticed that there was plenty of ‘traffic’ between the flocks of sand-eel in the shallow waters along the east coast and nearby nesting colonies of Razorbills and Guillemots. There were Puffins around too, I’m not too sure if they were nesting nearby or had just come round for a feast.

Anyway, here they are. Please click on the image to enlarge and leave any comment, goo or boo, below. I would especially like to hear from any other experiences with shooting these fast flapping auks with the Fuji custom tracking settings. Cheers