I’ve been burning the midnight oil lately with client work and decided to take the day off to capture some Nikon 1 J5 bird images.

Since I was planning to focus on capturing photographs of birds-in-flight I used four, thick elastic bands to attach my Zacuto Z-Finder to the back of my J5.

I then attached the 1 Nikon CX 70-300 mm f/4.5-5.6 zoom lens and headed out to have some fun.

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

My first stop was at Eastport Drive by Hamilton harbour to capture some images of cormorants.

As I expected the J5 did a good job with perched birds and having the Zacuto attached made it a bit easier.

Birds in flight were a bit trickier since the AF-C on my J5 is a slight bit slower to acquire initial focus than with my V2s.

The cormorant population has decreased somewhat at Hamilton harbour, resulting in fewer image opportunities. Never-the-less I was able to get a few acceptable photographs.

Next I headed off to Hendrie Valley to see if the terns would cooperate.

As luck would have it a few birds did show up for about an hour or so and I was able to capture a few images.

The terns did not exhibit any fishing behaviour so all I was able to capture were some typical ‘fly by’ photographs.

There were a few swallows around and I took a few minutes to capture some images of perched birds.

I took a run out to Cayuga Ontario to try my hand at some hummingbird images at Ruthven Park, as well as some of the other birds around the bird-banding hut.

Ending the day overlooking the Niagara Gorge, I was able to capture a few photographs of vultures riding the thermals.

Overall it was an enjoyable day, allowing me to clear my mind and simply enjoy being out with my camera gear.

Technical Note:
All images were captured hand-held with a Nikon 1 J5 and 1 Nikon CX 70-300 mm f/4.5-5.6 zoom lens. A Zacuto Z-Finder was attached to the back of the J5. All images in this article were produced from RAW files using my standard process of DxO OpticsPro 11, CS6 and Nik.

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Article and all images are Copyright 2016 Thomas Stirr. All rights reserved. No use, duplication or adaptation of any kind is allowed without written consent. If you see this article reproduced anywhere else it is an unauthorized and illegal use.