BIRD WATCHING

I enjoy bird photography. It can be challenging because some of them move extremely fast, while others just stay right out of lens reach. I use a Canon 100-400 IS lens, hand held to take the bird photos. I’ve upgraded my camera a few times over the years, and I can see the difference between a photo taken with a Canon 10d and 40d vs the photos taken with the Canon 5d miii. Everyone says it’s the lens that makes the difference, but the camera has made a big difference as well. A few years ago, I updated the Canon lens to the newer 100-400 model and that actually made things even sharper at longer distances. Of course, as always, sometimes it is the person behind the lens that makes a difference. It helps to have co-operative models as well.

Violet Green back swallows

The swallows nest in a bird house on our porch each year. They don’t always pick the same birdhouse, but they usually have two batches of swallows each year. This year was hotter than normal and the mama swallow was determined that the babies would leave the nest, especially during the hot part of the day. The drama continued for a week or two, but towards the end, the mama bird was not letting the young ones back in the bird house at all. She kept a vigil from inside the bird house and chased off any of her offspring that tried to get back in the birdhouse. One young one was a bit more persistent than the others and seemed to be begging, but mama stayed firm and the young one finally flew off and into the trees across from the bird house. These photos were shot with a Canon R5 with a Canon 500 F4 is ii lens and an EF to RF adapter. The camera lens was mounted on a Wimberly head and tripod. It was between 7:30 am and 9:00 am and the sun was just starting to hit the birdhouse. The photos with the bird-house were shot at F7.1, ISO 800 at 1/800th of a second.

Click on the first photo to see the full photo and scroll through the photos to watch the drama in sequence.

2019

2019 brought a lot of new birds to our house. We saw blue jays, and gold finches and this year the birds stuck around. It could be because a few years ago we redid the pond in our back yard and gave them a place to hang out. Once we started seeing the birds we put up some feeders and that encouraged the birds to stay even longer. For a while we even had ducks in the pond

Some more bird photos I’ve taken at home and on vacations throughout the years.

HERON

The photos of the heron were taken in Cottonwood Arizona. For these photos I used a canon 10d, and the Canon 100-400mm lens. I hand hold the lens because birds just move too fast for me when using the tripod. There are folks who use the tripod and get fabulous bird photos, but I haven’t had a lot of luck doing it that way. I set the aperture and try to get a fast shutter speed when taking bird in flight photos. It can be a hard balance, because my lens only goes to 5.6 or so when close to 400mm which means I tend to shoot a lot of birds in flight at F5.6 or possibly F8. With my newer camera (Canon 5dmiii) I can sometimes increase the ISO setting to 800 and get a little faster shutter speed.

HUMMINGBIRDS

You can take thousands of photos of hummingbirds and only come away with a few keepers. Even if they aren’t all “gallery” quality, they are fun birds to photograph. The trick is to get the photograph as they leave or come into the feeder, because well who really wants to see those red bird feeders in every photo.