Tuesday morning while I watched some lesser goldfinches bathing in the fountain, the female Anna’s hummingbird dive bombed them and they escaped to the safety of the shrubs. I was sitting just a few feet away from the fountain and realized that a garden ornament next to the fountain obstructed my view but I didn’t want to move it or move myself because I knew the hummer probably wouldn’t return. So, I practiced manually fine tuning my focus so that the bird, not the garden ornament in front, or the leaves behind, was in focus. The hummer stayed low behind the rusty bars but I managed to succeed with a few shots. I was hand holding the 80-400mm lens and I was pleased to overcome, at least on this day, one of my problems with auto focus that locks on an object near a moving target instead of the target. When I first turned a ring on the lens to focus, I mistakenly twisted the focal length ring instead of the focus ring so I took these shots at 390mm instead of 400mm. Fine tuning my focus in wildlife shots is something I really need to practice. Well, that and keeping the subject out of dead center.
