Which isn't to say the animals in my yard necessarily like being photographed, but unfortunately for them, they don't have much say in the matter.^[1] This one seems tolerably amused, at least.

I figure the best way to get better at shooting birds in flight is to start with easier subjects, that aren't a) as far away and b) moving as fast. While I finally found a helpful video for setting the camera to animal eye tracking, this earlier image locked on to the squirrel's nose.

1/800sec, f/2.8, iso 100 e.v. +0.3 180mm focal length, 13:09 14apr21; Soncy ILCE-7C with Tamron 70-180 Di III VXD, colour & value adjusted, scaled to 4000 pixels

Though it wasn't what I intended I was actually pleased with the effect, because from the rodent's point of view, its nose and whiskers are more vital to it, and this focus emphasizes that.

Here's a crop of the image above, scaled down to 512 pixels.

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