This summer we took the kids to the iron age stone fort/city of Eketorp, Öland (a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea). It is a reconstruction of the original constructions, as authentic as can be done, with actors dressed in what they believe to be authentic, pigs, goats and hens running free on the streets...a lot of fun for the kids.

In a very dark iron age house (no windows except the opening for the smoke) the beeping sounds of hungry birds revealed that there were several birds nests hanging below the ceiling right above our heads (and these houses were not built for playing basket!). Now and then some adult birds swoooshed right above us, causing an intensified beeping.

I had no longer lens than the DA*50-135 with me, bu this was close, so on it went. But I could not really see the nests, so I had to aim according to the direction of most noise. And obviously I had to use flash, and the only one I had was the built in flash.

Here are the hungry five:


And here comes the mother (father?):


Some cropping, and...I had to use the red-eye-tool in lightroom!

I wanna go back with a real flash and without the constant stream of tourists who could not understand what on earth I was doing standing in their way...and without a family wondering when I'm gonna join them to the next building...

[Douglas_of_Sweden]

Forgot: I trusted the autofocus...and that worked out quite well...so much for bad Pentax AF in low light. Though honestly, when I tried another nest, the autofocus was fooled by a couple of straws hanging down in between the camera and the nest, which I couldn't see in the darkness

[cupic]

NIce and lucky


cheers

[rmtagg]

nice, I love my 50-135

[Douglas_of_Sweden]

nice, I love my 50-135

So do I, a great lens, though I did not regard it as a bird lens, but having seen danielchtongs pic of a woodpecker in the fish-eye thread I admit that the DA50-135 is a fairly long lens for birding

NIce and lucky


cheers

Thanks! Lot's of luck. Can still not really believe that they built so close to where people were walking. Standing on my toes I could have picked the little swallow-kids down from the nest. If there had been one nest I could have thought that it was a mistake by the parents starting the construction work some weekend without visitors, but there were at least four of them.