Sharp sticks

Yep, it's that time of year again:

But what does not change is the ability of the autofocus on my lens to pick out the smallest twig in front of the bird I want to photograph, rather than the bird itself. In this case it was one of a local record of 7 Grey Partridges that were about this morning. What a lovely sharp stick in front of that grey and orange blob. Time to practice manual focus I reckon: