Play day

Decided that today I would just just play around and look for something interesting. rather than working so hard to get a great looking photo.

Experimented taking photos of flying gulls against trees to determine if focus was acceptable with my camera/lens combination. Conclusion: photos against the sky without trees have about a 90% focus success rate. Taking photos of flying birds with a tree background is problematic with a low success rate. When the trees are open and there are individual branches against the sky it's the worst. The blipped photo is when the gull was in transition from blue sky to this type of open tree branch background, and it started to lose focus even in transition. Photos taken against a completely open tree branch background did not meet my standards for focus.

If the trees are dense and form a mostly solid colored background, then focus is okay (see extra photo for example). Shutter speeds of 1/5000th and 1/4000th were used, so I don't think this was an issue.  Also the gulls were not extremely fast moving.

Both of the photos are herring gulls.  Main blip is a juvenile herring gull (dark eyes and pinkish bill, not a yellow bill as a ring-billed gull would have).  Extra is also a herring gull (pink feet not yellow feet).