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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....

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby 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...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Gull Scores a Bread
time zero

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Easy Come, Easy Go
T +0.56 seconds
Kite has taken bread from gull

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Is There No Honor Among Thieves?
T +1.6 seconds
( check out those drumsticks on the challenging kite! )

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/3200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Clean Getaway
T +3.0 seconds

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/5000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nya-Nya, I've Got The Bread...
T +4.6 seconds

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/8000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Coordinated Attack!
T +8.7 seconds
a big nasty crow also covets the bread

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/6400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby 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.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/6400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby 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.