Continuing the story from my previous post — Full-Frame Merlin: Birds-in-Flight Photography Adventure in Cypress Hills, Alberta — this next moment unfolded just seconds after takeoff.

After launching from its perch, the Merlin began circling my RV in a graceful clockwise loop toward another fence post further down the road. Before long, the bird’s path put me in a bit of a photographer’s dilemma: the physics simply stopped working in my favour. With my super-telephoto Sony 600mm f/4 (paired with an extender on the Sony a1 II), there was only so much twisting I could manage — especially with my seatbelt still on (I’d pulled over, engine off, for the shot).

At that point, instinct and experience took over. I pulled my face away from the viewfinder, extended the camera out the window, and continued tracking the Merlin purely by feel and intuition. Decades of practice — forty years’ worth of bird photography muscle memory — came together in that split second.

The result: a full-frame, perfectly timed dorsal view of the Merlin banking against a soft, pastel sky. A fleeting instant, beautifully frozen in motion — and a reminder that sometimes, the best shots happen when physics gives way to pure experience.