Warning, some of the shots posted below are graphic and some might find them distasteful.
I walked outside yesterday morning and saw a large group of turkeys near the end of my driveway. The turkeys were agitated and very vocal. They were surrounding two tom turkeys that appeared to be "chest butting" each other. Eventually all the turkeys scattered except the two toms. They repeatedly bit each other on the beak, "lip locked" together for long periods of time. This went on for about 30 minutes and the birds seemed nearly oblivious to me as they wandered about. They frequently got tangled up as they tried to peck each other.
You can see the wheels of a pickup in the second shot, a passerby was also captivated by this scene as were several of my next door neighbors as they watched me photographing the 2 birds. We went all over the yard, as they slugged it out in the freezing weather, with a light snow falling.
You can see that in some of these shots, I was able to get quite close to the birds. Suddenly, one of the birds flew off and landed way up in a large oak tree, followed by the second bird. They were separated by about 10 feet. The retreating bird then flew off and the incident was over.
I took all of these shots with a 300 f4 IS lens mounted on a 20D. It was heavily overcast and I had to shoot at ISO 1600, f4.
Wow!!!! Some of the best behavioral shot I have ever seen. Who knows what is going on. What a treat to see, this is amazing stuff! You lucky dog.
Tim
edit, Sorry not to mention this above. Nice pictures. I realize that your angles and all were limited, the exposure are all good. Nice work! Thanks for sharing.
awesome pictures . They are very sharp and great detail. it is unbelievable you could get so close . i know i have tried and the turkeys are very spooky. Anyhow did you use the IS ? What speed were you able to shoot them at?
again nice shots very well focused and exposed ... Bill
I appreciate all the nice comments. I was concerned about grossing people out but everyone I have shown them to have thought they were very interesting. Yes, I did leave IS on and with ISO 1600, got plenty of shutter speed shooting wide open f4. In hindsight, I should have reduced it to 800 or even 400. But I was just so excited to see this and didn't know how long it would go on so I kept moving and shooting. I have never been so close to turkeys because they seem to have a keen sense of awareness and move away when they see me.
They are hard to shoot due to the distance, its very hard to get the head in focus and without that, the shot is worthless. Plus exposure is very difficult with that dark body and light colors in the head, a mix of very light; white, pink and blue.
In the spirit of Valentine's Day, here are some more really odd shots I took last spring. I looked outside and saw a tom doing a dance around a hen that was lying on the ground. He was puffing up and spreading his tail. Then all of a sudden he was standing on top of the hen and he began moving his feet up and down on her back! This went on for a short while, then he got down, displayed a few more times and the hen wandered off. How strange is that? Thats all I saw; maybe he struck out!
