Twinkle twinkle little bat

How I wonder what you're at (as Alice said).
Unknown species in broad daylight at 10 am, 19th March 2012 in South Devon. I guess it was very hungry as it can only just have emerged from hibernation and the previous night was cold, so it may not have been able to feed properly.

This is a really nice picture Gentle Lemur. How far away were you from the bat?

It is amazing that just about all of us live with several bat species all around us and we hardly, if ever, see them. And they do so much for us in terms of pollination and pest control. Thank you bats.

There are some bats that fly in daylight, another occasional ZooChatter saw one in the middle of summer at Ness Gardens, an amazing sight (apparently) as the wings appeared almost translucent against the sun.

We did find out which species it was... something I've since forgotten. Karoocheetah is our local bat expert so perhaps she can help out.

Knowing how hard it is to capture birds in flight, I can only imagine how much more difficult it is to catch a bat!

Well done Gentle Lemur!

I was just walking from my new flat to my car, with my camera case and my laptop (always the last thing to be loaded). Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a flying sparrow doing a U turn, and I thought how odd!
Then I realised it was a bat.
I pulled my camera out of its case - it had my 105mm macro on it. I set the shutter speed to 1/1000s, set the distance at something suitable (about 4m at a guess), tried to keep the bat near the middle of the viewfinder and shot 64 photos before it vanished. I didn't have time to think or I would have increased the ISO
This is the only shot in the frame and more or less in focus. It was quite impossible to pan and focus at the same time on such a small and fast moving target. The photo is heavily cropped and sharpened.
The bat was flying and feeding above a lawn, where a number of insects were flying in the sunshine. It was flying looping circuits with some flutters, as it caught something I presume. I don't think it was a pipistrelle or a noctule, as I have seen these flying in very different ways. Research continues.

Alan

On my Canon there's a setting for (I think it's called) servo-focus - it's good when shooting against the sky as all focus points are active and when one of them hits a target like a bird, it focuses on that and constantly updates to keep the target in focus. Then the only problem is to keep the subject in frame. And the closer you get, the more you have to pan with the target.

Again, well done!

Hix said:

On my Canon there's a setting for (I think it's called) servo-focus - it's good when shooting against the sky as all focus points are active and when one of them hits a target like a bird, it focuses on that and constantly updates to keep the target in focus. Then the only problem is to keep the subject in frame. And the closer you get, the more you have to pan with the target.

Again, well done!

Click to expand...

Unfortunately the more focus points that are active, the slower the overall response time (even microchips have their limits). I knew that the autofocus on my D300s could not cope with this situation. I also knew that the bat might disappear at any moment, so I just tried to buy as many tickets for the lottery that I could . The EXIF data tells me that I took 64 shots in 2 minutes and 46 seconds

Alan

gentle lemur said:

The EXIF data tells me that I took 64 shots in 2 minutes and 46 seconds

Click to expand...

Slow poke. You can shoot that many frames in 4½ seconds with a 1Dx.

With all the focus points active the AI servo (or "AL servo" as the gentleman at the talk called it) on a Canon 7D is terrible, as is the autofocus of the 7D in general, but the 5D Mk.II is much, much better, even with all its focus points active. The newer Canons such as the 1Dx are building on some of the principals of the 7D system but have dedicated processors just for the AF and are hopefully much improved.

Here's an AI servo shot from the 5D: http://goo.gl/ht3Xc

5DMk.III is being released in Australia tomorrow. $3999 for the body alone.

gentle lemur said:

The bat was flying and feeding above a lawn, where a number of insects were flying in the sunshine. It was flying looping circuits with some flutters, as it caught something I presume. I don't think it was a pipistrelle or a noctule, as I have seen these flying in very different ways. Research continues.

Click to expand...

I don't really know anything about UK bats, but aren't noctules the most likely to be seen in daylight (paradoxically enough)?