You may be less than surprised to know that this post’s image is not the photo that I had envisaged/intended!
Once a bird is airborne, one fiftieth of one second can prove a surprisingly long time – long enough to transition from “look at that bird!” to “nothing to see but sky”.
Still, the photo above does usefully illustrate the point made in #2 in this series.
If today’s “oops, most of the bird had already flown out of frame when the shutter fired” photo was the only available visual information, you would still know that this bird was definitely not an adult male, that it was probably an adult female, but that it just might be a juvenile of either gender.
Photo is copyright Doug Spencer, taken at 4.41 pm on 14 May 2023 in Shenton Bushland, just five railway stations from Perth, on the Perth-Fremantle line.