My objective when taking this image was to capture small birds in flight. I've found this to be a difficult task compared to photographing large birds, such as eagles, hawks, and egrets because the smaller birds fly faster and their wings move much faster than the large birds. I photographed these birds at a local park where many people leave them seed to eat. I pre-focused the camera at a point above a log that was on the ground, and as the birds flew in, I released the shutter with the camera on Continuous mode. Usually, the cardinals will give way to the more aggressive blue jays, but in this case the cardinal was prepared to defend his territory. The camera was a Nikon D800 with a Sigma 150-600 lens at 155 mm focal length. The ISO was 1000, aperture was f/7.1 at 1/1000 second shutter speed with the camera on Shutter priority.