Great Tit in flight

Growing weary of January's endless procession of miserable, overcast days, I decided to try to capture a great tit in flight. The obstacles in the way of anything half decent were obvious – the absence of defining light would result in an inevitable absence of detail. Determined to go ahead, however, I bumped up the ISO on the 1DS MkII to 1,000, opened up the aperture to the widest available (f8) with a x2 extender on the 70-300mm telephoto and hoped the resulting shutter speed of 1/2,500 sec would be fast enough. The result is – understandably, I hope – not rich in detail but does have some visual appeal, the image feeling a little like a Chinese painting or a detail from Chinoiserie wallpaper. Oh to happy accidents…