In November of 2022, I finally graduated from years of bridge cameras to a "real" camera setup. Freshly minted Nikon Z6ii and 24-120mm f4 in hand, I waited anxiously for another month for my Tamron 150-600mm to arrive so I could start cranking out epic bird photos. Sadly the Tamron ended up having communication errors with my camera, and after about 4 months I parted ways with it. Its replacement was the phenomenal Nikon 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 VR S. The second it twisted onto my camera I knew it would be my new photography best friend, and that I *needed* to take it for a spin that instant.
Thankfully it was late April, so migration was starting to ramp up pretty seriously. A run to Montrose Point during spring migration will almost always result in some good birds and/or great photo-ops. For about an hour I was having an absolute blast shooting random birds flitting through the trees, but hadn't gotten anything worthy of a lot of excitement yet. A jaunt over to the grove of crabapples/hawthorn trees on the north side of the point proved to be pretty great as there was a gorgeously bright adult Grasshopper Sparrow busy foraging in the muddy grass.
I knew I couldn't blow this opportunity, it was just too good. My brother and I quietly snuck behind a tree in the general direction of where the bird was headed, and I employed a strategy I've found to be pretty effective when it comes to getting close to birds that you don't normally get close to. If there's something that can entirely obstruct the bird's view of you, you can move in on where you're going to shoot from while it can't see you. In this case, the Grasshopper Sparrow had thick bases of trees with little incut areas it was giving all of its attention to, so I was able to position myself perfectly pointed at the next tree in the line of where it seemed to be heading. Laying facedown in freshly rained-on grass wasn't exactly ideal for my now very wet shirt, but as soon as the sparrow popped back out into view from behind the base of a tree, I knew the shots were going to be good. It instantly started quickly hopping towards me, following a line that would've put it directly into my lens hood. I very quickly learned just how close my new lens could focus, a mind blowing 2.46 feet from the sensor at 400mm. The sparrow got closer and closer, and eventually stopped about 2 feet in front of my lens, cocked its head to look at the shiny new front element, and kept going right past me. I looked up from my viewfinder and over at my brother and friend who had walked up in the midst of the encounter, seeing that his expression essentially said "NAILED IT!!"
Waiting for the bird to entirely move a good distance away from us so as to not scare it away completely, I started to scroll through a few of the photos I got, and I was just blown away by the crispiness, clarity, and outstanding quality of this new lens. To this day, I've taken well over 125,000 images using the lens and have had really no complaints about it at all, except for some outrageous things I know aren't exactly feasible such as the wish for it having a slightly faster maximum aperture, and the wish for the unnecessary little screen on top to go away... Regardless, it's phenomenal. Fantastic. Outstanding. What a good bird and experience to kick off my time with the lens.
