Bird Photography in Rainy Season

Wondering how to go about bird photography in rainy season . With correct knowledge your photography gear you can have amazing photographs during the rainy season. Classic once are those getting captured with rain drops blurred as streaks at the same having the bird in sharp focus creating amazing atmosphere in the picture . The trick is to have as minimum shutter speed as possible to get the drops of rain as long streaks giving a nice moody effect to the picture. Another challenge is that with low shutter speed your bird should not make any movements otherwise it will result in motion blur of bird as well ruining your photograph.

Unfortunately i have not been able to capture any such "good" photographs however i do have some not so failed attempts , shared below

Brahmny Starling in Rain

Pic taken from inside of my car during moderate rain. The settings were 1/100 SS , f6.3 , 600mm & auto ISO . Camera used canon EOS-90d , paired with sigma 150-600.

Photograph is not as sharp as it should be because of low shutter speed which caused a little motion blur . However the technique is well demonstrated as you can see the Rain drops are visible as streaks and subject is .... well in this case "almost" in focus.

Now taking photographs in rain also makes me worry for my gear. 90D does not have a great weather sealing and neither does the Sigma lens . I was photographing from inside of the car and hence was quite safe. Do check the weather sealing specifications of your gear before getting out in the rain.

Another example , having a Grey Headed Swamphen is shown below , gear used was EOS-R7 with RF100-500 with settings of 1/100 SS , f7.1 , focal length of 500 mm and auto ISO.

Grey Headed Swamphen

Photograph was taken during moderate rain but i failed to capture the rain streaks as the rain had stopped while i was taking the photos.

Though i could not capture the intended effect but i love the droplets sparkling on the feathers of Swamphen and also the lush green habitat of the bird . I wonder how the photograph would have turned out if i had captured the same pic with some significant rainfall.

Both attempts failed but it gave me a good exposure of experience in Bird photography during rainy season.