Tītītipounamu - taking flight

I had a few attempts at getting some shots of tītītipounamu (riflemen) in flight in the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary over the weekend, with mixed results. They're tiny and fast and similar colours to their environment and it's usually enough to deceive the brain on my camera. Here are a few I've culled from the several thousand shots I took.

First off, here's a male rifleman who has just spotted a looper caterpillar hanging from a thread, then snacks on it. You may need to zoom in on the photos to see the looper. Focus is off, particularly the second, but it's all I got.

Hopping up a branch.

These birds weigh about 6g, about the same as a teaspoon of sugar, so don't seem to need to worry too much about getting up airspeed (through dropping off a branch) or aerodynamics (tucking legs in) like other birds might. A quick leap up and off they go.

This one liked the sunshine.

Again, this one doesn't seem too bothered about pulling up the undercarriage.

It's hard to get two or more birds in focus at 600mm focal length (and aperture wide open). Here they're both in the same focal plane so it worked.

All my action sequences are shot at 20 frames per second. These three frames here are consecutive, so are taken 0.05 seconds apart. So the third frame (airborne on the right) was shot a tenth of a second after the bird was perched on the branch in the first frame. Focus is missed again (the third frame has the distant wing feathers in focus). Next time.....

The one of a bird taking flight from a lancewood leaf is probably the best focused sequence overall. First few shots (before the bird started moving) I had eyeball focus (always the intent), then on the next shot (as soon as the bird moved) the focus was lost completely (so not posted here), then the next shot it picked up eyeball focus again, then the last shot it lost it and managed leg focus. Still, if I was trying to do this manually I would have absolutely zero chance of success. This sequence represents three out of five consecutive shots, so covers one fifth of a second from first to last photo.