Grey kingbird on the island of St. Kitts - looking at my old files.

Photographed in 2016 with my D500, 80-400 mm S Nikkor lens.  @ 400 mm 1/250 f/7.1 ISO 400

The crop-sensor D500 renders the 400 mm focal length of my lens to 600 mm relative.  In the original shot, the bird filled 1/3 of the frame vertically, so the amount of cropping that was required was minimal.  

This is the first bird I looked up in my Howell and Webb bird book (see yesterday's blog).  Unfortunately, there were no images of the bird, not too surprising given that the bird inhabits a very narrow strip of Mexico's east coast and some islands of the Caribbean.  

The grey kingbird belongs to the tyrant flycatcher family, it is closely related to the western and eastern kingbirds we have locally.  It has similar behaviours; it perches on a branch that presents a clear field of view and waits for a flying insect to present itself.  

I will be looking at other birds I have photographed in tropical settings over the next few weeks, partly because I want to familiarise myself with my new bird book.  I plan on presenting images of birds I have not previously written blogs on.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com