bird photography : yellow-rumped warbler

On a recent trip to visit John's parents in West Virginia, John spotted a bird with a bright yellow tail patch that neither he nor Beth could identify immediately, and unfortunately, John had not been able to get a good photograph of the bird, either. Beth's friend Adam quickly ID's the bird as a Yellow-Rumped Warbler, the most common warbler seen in the US, and on a subsequent trip to Huntley Meadows, John and Beth found an entire flock of the tiny birds flitting around a clearing--leaving the two to wonder how they'd missed seeing this beautiful bird before.

Equipment: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT Canon EF 300mm f4L IS with 1.4x Teleconverter Settings: f8; 1/100 sec.; focal length at 420 mm; ISO 200 Date: March 20, 2006 2:49 pm Location: Huntley Meadows Park / Fairfax County, VA Photography Notes: The rule for shutter speeds when handholding dictates that the speed should be no lower than the reciprocal of the lens' focal length, and even with the two-stop benefit of the lens' image stabilization, the 1/100th of a second used here would seem a bit low. However, John had time to set up his camera's tripod, making shutter-speed sharpness concerns largely moot.