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Hi Rowland
If the highlights are an important part of the bird and how you want to represent it, I would check the histogram on the LCD at the time of shooting, just to see if they are blown or not. That is, is there a spike off the RHS of the histogram, indicating that potentially, you have lost all detail in the whites.
Of course, the bird needs to be obliging and to remain in situ so you can them make the necessary adjustments and then re-shoot!
If I was shooting, say, a white egret, and I was metering off the egret, I would over expose by around 1 to 1 ½ stops to prevent the white feathers being recorded as mid-grey.
If there are many dark tones present in the general scene, these may fool the auto exposure. In this case, the camera may want to let more light in to record the dark tones as mid gray. If that is the case, any whites will tend to blow out.
For birds in flight (BIF) against a blue sky, I tend to shoot at 1/1600 sec to freeze the action, F5.6 and ISO400. Generally, this gives me an optimum exposure for the bird and “ignores” the brighter back ground.
If the bird happens to fly in front of some dark foliage, provided it is not in the shadow and the skies are bright with sunlight, the above settings still work for me, so I do not have to constantly fiddle with them.
If I were shooting very early in the morning or towards dusk, I would adjust the settings and would not be shooting BIF, unless I wanted to artistically blur the action.
Cheers
Dennis
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