Backyard Critters

This morning I was looking off the back porch and I saw a bunch of about 20 turkeys meandering along our fence line headed for the woods atop the hill.  So - I figured this would be a good time to try out my 70-300mm zoom lens that I got a couple months ago.  I had tried a couple of times but couldn't get the focus right.  Since these guys were about 3-400 feet down the hillside - it should be easier to focus on them. 

 

 

For my first shot I zoomed in on the closest group and snapped off two real quick photos.  Just as I was lowering my camera to double check on how the focus looked in the picture, 4 or 5 of the turkeys let out squawks, took to wing, then settled back on the ground.  I forgot about checking the focus and took aim again but the turkeys had moved further up the hill.

 

So I re-focused, took a couple more quick shots then headed back into the house to download and edit the photos that I had taken.  Low and behold as I was enlarging my first photos, I found out why the turkeys had spooked. 

If you look in the foreground, bottom center, you'll see one of our wild cats headed back up the hill after a defeated attempt to get himself a turkey dinner.  I'm not sure he'd have known what to do with it after he caught it because these turkeys are not the little birds he's used to.  I'd sure have liked to watch it though if he had grabbed one.  Now that would have been a picture.  By the way, the lens worked fine, it appears to be more operator error on previous attempts.