In my flight SERIES posting of the Greater Yellowlegs yesterday (click "NEXT"), I mused about the fact that I only got wings-up shots of the four consecutive flight shots and I wondered why. I presented some reasoning; however, after giving it some more thought, I now realize that I made a colossal blunder in my reasoning. I mixed up Frames per Second and Shutter Speed. I now realize that only the FPS have a bearing on images captured vs flight poses. Ted probably had it right when he suggested that a higher FPS would have captured the different flight poses. I probably was right also in suggesting that my FPS and the Wing-beats per second were probably synchronized or of similar magnitude.

I realize that this stuff may be boring to most, but once I open up a problem, I am determined to find the answer. Example 1, illustrated in the image below shows that when Frame-rate and Wing-beat rates are the same, one will capture similar flight poses during a burst of consecutive shots. Example 2, shows that where the Frame-rate of the camera is double that of the Wing-beat rate, one will capture opposite poses; in this case Wings-up and Wings-down. It follows from this that for even faster Frame-rates, relative to the bird's Wing-beat rates, a greater variety of flight poses can be captured during a consecutive burst of shots.



I was not able to find wing-beat rates for Greater Yellowlegs; however, based on published rates for Sanderlings and Semipalmated Plovers, six beats per second seems to be a reasonable guess.