Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Spot-Billed Duck (Anas poecilorhynacha)


Spot-billed duck has been considered as a rare migrant till recent time.  But Ceylon Bird Club members were able to observe some breeding birds of this duck in Vankalai Ramsar wetland site recently and so it is now considered as a Breeding resident of Sri Lanka supplemented by migrant birds from India during the North-East monsoons .Migrant birds are earlier reported from tanks, paddy fields and marshes of Jaffna peninsula, Mahawelli flood plain national park and eastern sea belt. This duck can be distinguished from all other ducks by its colorful bill. Vankalei is a good site for observing this duck and above picture was taken while it was flying over the Mannar causeway. 

4 comments:

  1. Interesting! By the way,could you give me a tip or two about taking a photo of a bird in mid flight, as you have done?

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  2. Amila

    To capture a flying bird you need high shutter speed. Which is a must also due to some other reason in my case. That is I always use to capture birds by keeping my 400mm lens handheld. Using of tripod is a headache for me in wild life photography with rapidly moving subjects like birds. So I always keep ISO speed as 400 and keep maximum aperture open with aperture priority mode unless and otherwise available light is sufficient for program mode. I hardly use auto focus mode of the lens for wild life subjects since it is extreamly difficult of keeping lock on your moving subjects among foliage. But for the flying subjects like this without any disturbances it is the lens which can quickly focus and lock it not us. So I shift focusing mode to auto whenever I encounter a subject like this one. panning techniques may also help you to freeze moving birds while background get blurred.

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  3. I see,so you wouldn't be able to do it without a DSLR,right? Thanks for the valuable info, mate!

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  4. I don't think so. Though not easy as with DSLR it is not impossible with other type of cameras.

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