I'd made attempts to photograph birds from the riverside near my hometown @ Eranhikkal before. One such attempt is here: Scenes from the River side. I was back at my hometown this weekend for some personal work and did manage to go there again. After couple of attempts, one kingfisher and an egret posed for me on an evening, but the shots turned out like the usual ones, especially with the dim light. On going there again, the next day morning, I spotted a chirpy kingfisher perched on a tree branch in the middle of the river.

The bird kept on preening itself and checking out movements in the water, ignoring me, even with me trying to move closer. It made couple of unsuccesful dashes into the water and everytime returned to the same tree. The two pics were taken from close distance using the EF f/5.6 400mm lens, mounted on a tripod and a wireless remote to reduce movements. The tripod was a little unstable and started shaking with every shot and needed couple of seconds to stablize. I was using ISO-100, with the maximum shuter exposure (f/5.6) in Av mode and got shutter times of 1/125s for both pictures. With these longer shutter durations (for a 400mm non-IS lens), it was very important to avoid all movements and I guess the wireless remote (RC1) turned out to be a very useful tool. In timer mode, I would not have been able to click as fast as I would want to!

Suddenly, to my surprise and delight, the bird flew towards me and sat on a cable right above my head! With a fixed 400mm, I had to walk away to make sure that I have a full frame and later stop down to f/8.0 for more DOF and lesser exposure time (1/100s) @ ISO-100. It sat there chirruping for a short time before flying away.

Thank u birdie for not getting scared and fly away :) U shud've been a model in ur previous birth or wud be one in ur next ;-)