The Great Kamo River Battle for the Bread
NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Yesterday I posted about a bird feeding frenzy at the Kamo river in Kyoto, brought about by a couple with a big box of bread. Today's post is a sequence of nine shots of one event, spanning 11½ seconds....

Heading for the Bread Zone T minus 1.39 Seconds (man is off camera right throwing big hunks of bread) -- Kamo River north of Nijo -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/2500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image datanearby photos
Heading for the Bread Zone
T minus 1.39 Seconds
(man is off camera right throwing big hunks of bread)

The kite (hawk-like bird of prey mentioned yesterday) looks as if it tried to grab something from the water, but came up empty handed. But just after this shot, a hunk of bread landed in front of the gulls...

Gull Scores a Bread time zero -- Kamo River north of Nijo -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/2500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image datanearby photos
Gull Scores a Bread
time zero
Easy Come, Easy Go T +0.56 seconds Kite has taken bread from gull -- Kamo River north of Nijo -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/2500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image datanearby photos
Easy Come, Easy Go
T +0.56 seconds
Kite has taken bread from gull
Is There No Honor Among Thieves? T +1.6 seconds ( check out those drumsticks on the challenging kite! ) -- Kamo River north of Nijo -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/2500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image datanearby photos
Is There No Honor Among Thieves?
T +1.6 seconds
( check out those drumsticks on the challenging kite! )
Clean Getaway T +3.0 seconds -- Kamo River north of Nijo -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/3200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image datanearby photos
Clean Getaway
T +3.0 seconds
Nya-Nya, I've Got The Bread... T +4.6 seconds -- Kamo River north of Nijo -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — 1/5000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image datanearby photos
Nya-Nya, I've Got The Bread...
T +4.6 seconds
Coordinated Attack! T +8.7 seconds a big nasty crow also covets the bread -- Kamo River north of Nijo -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — 1/8000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image datanearby photos
Coordinated Attack!
T +8.7 seconds
a big nasty crow also covets the bread
On Your Tail T +9.8 seconds -- Kamo River north of Nijo -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — 1/6400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image datanearby photos
On Your Tail
T +9.8 seconds

I'll take the opportunity to point out again as I did yesterday that this was all manual-focus work. I'm really happy with the focus I maintained during this fast-action sequence.

T +10.2 seconds -- Kamo River north of Nijo -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — 1/6400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image datanearby photos
T +10.2 seconds

The kite eventually went into some trees, and the crow and another kite hounded him for a bit before losing interest. What's sort of funny about this is that I don't think the kites were really all that interested in the bread, once they found out what it was. Often I'd see them drop large chunks, perhaps after realizing that it's not the small rodent they thought it might have been. There were dozens of them riding flying in circles (I think “riding the thermals” is the proper phrase) and so perhaps each had to get a taste for themselves in order to lose interest.


One comment so far...

Wow! Wow! Wow! GREAT! shots.

— comment by Grandma Friedl on January 19th, 2011 at 12:03am JST (13 years, 3 months ago) comment permalink
Leave a comment...


All comments are invisible to others until Jeffrey approves them.

Please mention what part of the world you're writing from, if you don't mind. It's always interesting to see where people are visiting from.

IMPORTANT:I'm mostly retired, so I don't check comments often anymore, sorry.


You can use basic HTML; be sure to close tags properly.

Subscribe without commenting