January 2014: A trip to Central America led to opportunity to photograph a variety of hummingbirds and other species (click on the first image to enlarge and then toggle though with the arrow).
A few trip photos from Late May trip to Nevada's Catnip Mountain area (click on the first photo and then use the right-hand arrow to scroll through the set).
12/2012: Joulter Cays, North Andros Island, Bahamas: While this was actually a fly-fishing trip to the Joulter Cays, I did manage to photograph a few birds, so even though this is a long ways from Oregon, here are a few samples just for fun. I had very little time to look for songbirds (about 20 minutes each morning), but with more time, I'm sure good photos of Bananaquit, Western Spindalis, Greater Antillian Bullfinch, various warblers, and a variety of others would have been easy to come up with. Prairie and Pine Warblers were common, as were White-eyed Vireos and several others species. Endemics such as the Bahamas Mockingbird and Bahamas Swallow were also quite in evidence. Out on the water, shorebirds and wading birds occupied the occasional sand spit, and we even enjoyed a fly over from a lone Spoonbill. Bird pics below....
Stalking Shorebirds
Digital photography has made bird photography much easier than it was back in the film days, but some things never change: ultimately, to accumulate stellar photography of a wide range of species and in numerous settings, you have to understand bird behavior and you have to be willing to get dirty. Photographing these Greater Yellowlegs provided an abject lesson in those tenants. Two of the birds were feeding ravenously in the small remnant pool of a seasonal marsh and the light was outstanding: late afternoon with a light haze from forest fires to filter the sunlight. So I liked the prospects for good images, but I faced a major hurdle: I shoot a Canon first generation 100-400mm IS (yes, a 600 or 800 would have eliminated all the trouble, but I’m not budgeted for $10,000 lenses!), so I knew I needed to get close to the birds, preferably within 20 yards—no easy task when between me and the two Yellowlegs was 60 yards of open dry mudflat with no cover. Sometimes the direct frontal assault is the best—and only—option, so my stalk began by first very quietly weaving my way through a fringe of head-high marsh grass. This was the easy part, but still required a snail-like pace, for feeding along with the two Yellowlegs were three Killdeer, one of the ultimate alarm systems of the natural world—alarm the Killdeers and everything else goes on high alert. Once at the edge of the grass, I needed to cover at least 40 yards of wide-open, barren mudflat. Now you might think the belly crawl would be the choice tactic, but not so: with many animals, including many birds, the key is simply to make yourself part of the landscape by approaching head-on, with no lateral variation in your path, at an excruciatingly slow pace. In others words, just walk right up to them—but do so with no apparent movement: It took me 45 minutes to walk those 40 yards, each slow-motion half step carefully measured, eyes on the birds the entire time to monitor their physical attitude. Imagine a heron stalking prey—that’s the basic technique. Ultimately I walked within 20 yards, closer to 15 probably, and then took several minutes to bring the camera to bear as slowly as possible. You never know how birds will react to camera shutter noise, so if I was only going to get one burst from the old 40D, I wanted it to count, so I waited until I had one bird in great light, positioned sideways. Luckily the shutter noise did not bother them and after firing 300 or so shots, I very slowly dropped into a kneeling position to shoot closer to the birds’ level, then fired off another 300 shots. The light was beginning to fade by then, but I stuck around until dusk to make sure the birds—fattening up during fall migration—would not be spooked off their feed by my retreat. 
|
|