... blog post:
We, like many people, like to feed the garden birds. Watching their antics at the feeding station brings us many a happy time. But recently an interloper has arrived on the scene...
Enter squirry the grey squirrel who has found its way into the garden and discovered the, so far, squirrel proof peanut bird feeders.
Using my Lumix G-Vario 100-300mm f4-5.6 Power OIS zoom on my Olympus Pen-F, I snapped away at squirry whilst it tried unsuccessfully for over an hour to break into this particular feeder much to the annoyance of the local bird population.
Whilst our squirrel friend may look cute and fluffy it is, in reality, a fairly destructive nuisance. It's not for nothing that our Canadian cousins have labelled them "tree rats" - ask anyone who had them break into their loft and chew their way through cables and woodwork.
But they are very acrobatic and do make great subjects for photography I must admit, just not in our garden and preferably in a more naturalistic setting elsewhere.
Oh, if the pictures look a little soft that's because they were taken, perforce, through the kitchen window and thus through the two sheets of glass of the double glazing and wide open at the long end of the zoom which is it weakest spot. However, Sync-IS combining the Power IS in the lens and the IBIS in the camera was a boon in hand holding the camera and lens combo with the lens zoomed out to what is the equivalent to a 600mm in 35mm format and with pictures made at f5.6 typically at around an 1/80s at ISO 1600.