Birds galore at Irish seashores

Razorbills

 

Guillemots

Fulmars

Here are photos I recently took from our regular seabird population.

It is not that easy to take pictures of birds, you need quite a good telelens and some special settings - if your camera allows for them.

Here is what I did (you need all those settings mainly for birds in flight, but you can use them for sitting birds also - they might take off after all):

First of all you need a short shutter speed of 1/1000 sec. 

Set your camera settings on this with shutter speed priority.

With that you want an automatic ISO, because you cannot predict or change it on very short notice (if you cannot set this automatically, use a highish ISO of 400 or 800 because of the very short shutter speed).

The aperture will be chosen automatically with shutter speed priority.

Now, the focus, last but not least, needs to be constantly changed with the flight of the bird, thats easiest taken care of with an Autofocus Servo Setting - it will adapt the focussing on moving subjects.
One more thing, if in flight, follow one bird, its easier to concentrate on and predict what one little fellow is going to do...

Consult your camera´s manual for the above mentioned terms, if you have not used them before...