If you read about wildlife photography, you might run into the acronym BIF, and you might see that it is the “Holy Grail” of wildlife photography. BIF stands for “Birds in Flight”. It is a difficult, aggravating, and time consuming form of wildlife photography. If often requires a great deal of patience and “not quite what you wanted” photographs to cull through.

There are some shortcuts that can be used, such as building a garden that attracts Hummingbirds to get pictures of them. Often, it requires going to where the birds are, setting up a chair (or blind), and waiting for them to show. It is a lot like hunting, but you shoot pictures instead of bullets.

One of the down days at 7th Ranch, John tried to work on his bird photography. He found that he does not really have the patience to get really good bird photos, let alone perfect ones. There are some nice pictures here, but none of them are exceptional. There were about 177 photos in this set, and less than twenty had great focus. John mostly takes BOOF photos – Birds out of Focus photos.

The morning always starts with the lowing of cows. John thinks it is vastly better than waking to bugle calls.

The first victim of the day was a Lark Sparrow.

Shortly after this, a bunch of Bullock’s Orioles showed up. John was not able to get close enough to get good pictures, and they never came back during the stay. John caught a female Oriole landing, but the focus is not sharp. He had the 100 mm – 400 mm L lens on, so it should have focused fast enough, even if it did not have the range to get more zoom.

At the tree next to the trailer, two Western Kingbirds were frequent visitors. We think they had a nest in the tree because we saw them chase away other birds. One or the other liked to sit on a bare limb at the top.

The next victim was the Tree Swallow nesting in the nearest nest box. This is probably the clearest and closest Tree Swallow picture we have taken. They fly so fast that it is almost impossible to focus and track them.

Next to show up was a female Common Grackle. The males have more colors and stronger iridescence on their feathers.

And then a Robin showed up for a brief interval.

And another Lark Sparrow showed up. John got a picture that looks more like leaping to its death than a bird in flight. It might also be taking an in flight dump, but it is probably just the loose feather visible on other photos.

A tree in the next row of campers appears to have a Western Kingbird nest, too. There are two birds that are frequently there. Sometimes they do a synchronized wing flapping in the upper branches. They just flew around this time.

And some picture of the diligent Lark Sparrow mother sitting on her nest. She is a very diligent mother, but she did not do enough research on the neighborhood. The neighbors are kind of loud and annoying, but maybe, their nest is in a good school district.

And a few more blurry shots of flying Western Kingbirds.

The pictures are not unusable, but they are not much better than he was getting with a 15 year old camera.