Wood Pigeon & Collared Dove Photographs

Another frequent set of visitors to my garden in Brighton are wood pigeons and collared doves, and let me start by saying that they are a whole lot easier to photograph than the smaller birds that are so quick you can easily miss a shot. Sometimes these birds tolerate each other and feed on the ground, usually under the two bird feeders I have hanging from trees in the garden, and when they aren't fighting the other away they just get on with feeding. On this occasion they were ignoring one another and as you can see they weren't in the slightest bit bothered by the other and got very close. I snapped these two crossing each others path as they picked up dropped pieces of sunflower seeds from the small birds that use the feeder over head, the collared dove in the front is in focus with the larger wood pigeon just behind him.

As the sun continued to go down the wood pigeon kept coming back and forth from the garden looking for more food, so waiting very still at the back of the house I took this shot as he turned towards me and with the long shadows and the sunlight bringing out the rich colour of his neck and breast I'm glad I stuck around. This is one of my favourite bird photographs so far, a bit of luck capturing the bird in this stance with the perfect sunlight right across the image, and a lot of perseverance and patience. I took this using a 70-300mm lens set to 300mm, f5.6, handheld and on a 400ISO colour negative film.