Bird Photography

Until the pandemic I was not a birder. I wasn’t really more than a casual enthusiast of bird photography. But when you are confined to your home for weeks on end, strange forces begin to work on the psyche. You feel the need for shooting pictures, but your choices of subjects are few and far between. My wife was concerned that I might strap antlers to her head and ask her to bellow loudly. I knew that I must find a better outlet for my photography skills.

I am fortunate to have a large front window and a nearby flowering crab tree as well. I had never taken full advantage of such a fine, avian gathering spot until I started regular observation times and kept a careful eye to the tree. A variety of birds like to make that tree a stop on their morning or afternoon flight paths. Robins, cardinals, finches, blue jays, many types of sparrows, etc. have given a brief pause on their fly-by. I discovered that I could sit in the window and try to act as traffic controller with no realistic powers over when and if my favorites would appear in the tree. Patience is a virtue.

I am loathe to admit that I need to know more about bird identification. I keep a copy of National Geographic’s Field Guide to the Birds of North America handy on the coffee table, but I often refuse to lay the camera down to flip pages that may or may not successfully identify my feathered visitor. I also have an app on my phone that helps identify birds by size, color and habitat. It works to some degree but I get frustrated at continuous misidentifications of similar birds that share many of the same traits.

So, that puts me on a long, slow learning curve in my continuing foray into bird photography. For better or worse, I am really starting to love this niche of the photographic world. I am definitely getting better at making sight identifications, but I am slow to pick up nuances in twitters and tweets and other assorted calls that they chatter at me from their tree perch. Identifying, or rather misidentifying, males and females of some varieties is a stickler that I am slowly coming to grips with. If only they were all as easy as the American Cardinal.

I was somewhat chagrined when my neighbor almost put an end to my personal bird tree. Not being a bird enthusiast himself, he decided to try a ploy to keep the birds from making a mess on his deck. I looked out my window one day to spot a large, stuffed owl that had appeared on the roof of his house. His gambit worked all too well – not a bird was brave enough to confront the shadowy creature. Through careful negotiations, the owl is gone, the birds returned, and the author is back at his window station.

I don’t possess a super-powerful bird lens for my camera. Only through enlargements can I make a decent-sized bird print. I push the limits of my 300mm Nikon lens and if I continue to pursue bird photography as a passion, I will need find a better solution.