Small Birds in flight.....missed

One of the shots I wanted to capture for my Final portfolio is of a small bird coming into land and trying to capture this will fill in flash to make the wings motionless. I set off yesterday with this in mind to try and capture this shot. I took with me the following equipment.

• Canon 550D
• Canon 100 - 400 lens
• Canon Speedlite 430exII flashgun
• Tripod
• Wireless shutter release
• Bird food
• Camouflage netting (to cover all the equipment up)

Firstly when I arrived at the site I had an issue as all the feeders were emptied and thrown about on the floor and the area looked vandalised. Despite this I managed to tidy the area up and get the feeders up. I also filled up the feeders as much as I could with the food I had brought with me. I then set up the camera pointing at an area by the feeders took some test shots to check light levels and ensure the flash was not set too bright. After this I moved behind the hide and waited I knew it may take some time for the birds to come back but after a while they started to appear. Unfortunately despite my patience only one bird cam near the feeder my camera was trained on however I missed the shot I was after. Also hindering me was the two local cats that seemed to come into the area at regular intervals. I realised it was not going to be my day for capturing this shot so packed the equipment away and went to stalking birds again. This time however as the day was slightly dull I left the flash on the camera and decided I would use fill in flash for handheld shots.

I again did a few test shots to gauge the effective range of the flashgun then set about trying to get some different species. Although not leaving myself much time for this did manage to get a few shots of a Blue Tit and Reed Bunting and was quite happy with the results as the flash enabled me to use a higher shutter speed and also allowed to birds to stand out more in the photos compared to not using flash. I am keen to try this again although not having much time left on the course will focus on getting the 12 images for my portfolio edited before changing any.