Occasionally during take-off an American Kestrel will put on a show of its considerable acrobatic skills but it happens so fast with these little falcons that many of us don’t really appreciate the coordination and skill involved. Yesterday morning I got one shot that I think demonstrates it pretty well.
I found this male Black-headed Grosbeak foraging in a tree near a Montana mountain lake on my recent camping trip up there. The setting is a little cluttered but to my eye it’s an attractive clutter.
Mia and I often joke with each other that we’d make terrible landscape photographers because we’d be bored by all the waiting around for ideal conditions such as dramatic clouds and perfect light. We much prefer the excitement, unpredictability and the occasional and unexpected delights of bird photography. This Swainson’s Hawk was one of those nice surprises.
We returned home Thursday after spending three wonderful days camping at Flaming Gorge in NE Utah. This is very close to the view we had on most mornings from our campsites (two of them), though this image was taken the morning before the Osprey photo, below. As you’ll see, the lighting conditions were dramatically different…
Cliff Swallows are one of North America’s most social land birds. Their nesting colonies sometimes consist of up to 7,000 individuals. Originally they were birds of the western mountains where they nested under horizontal rock ledges in canyons and foothills but in the last 150 years their range has expanded to include most of the continent due to the construction of buildings, bridges and highway culverts that provide alternative nesting sites. But holy moly, are they ever difficult to photograph in flight! I suspect that most serious bird photographers have attempted swallow (any species) flight shots and I’m no exception. But their small size combined with their swift, erratic flight has always stymied me. Until last May I didn’t have a single legitimate “keeper” of any swallow species in flight but that spring I was finally able to get some shots I like but it took some significant alteration of my past strategies. 1/3200, f/7.1, ISO 800, 500 f/4, natural light One of my problems in the past was that the bird was nearly always shaded underneath. So finally it struck me (duh!) that I needed to be shooting them when the sun was very low – for me that meant early in the morning. 1/2500, f/6.3, ISO 800, 500 f/4, natural light But shooting flight shots just as the sun comes up provides another problem – sufficient shutter speed. At that time of day the light intensity is relatively low so I needed to be shooting at the effective noise limit of my Canon 7D – ISO 800….
This morning was the first time we’ve been out photographing since our Montana trip. I’ll post more images from Big Sky Country soon but I thought I’d break it up a bit with a couple of photos from this morning. 1/2500, f/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc The juvenile Burrowing Owls were quite active at just the right time – when the sun was still low but high enough to give me enough light and shutter speed that I didn’t have to crank up my ISO too far. I haven’t had a lot of luck with Burrowing Owls in full flight so I was quite pleased with this shot even though I had to add a bit of canvas to the image for composition. 1/2500, f/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc These youngsters are beginning to show some signs of maturing by the development of more color on the breast. As you can see, this is one of the young birds that has been banded.It’s very entertaining to watch these juveniles. In the morning before it gets too hot they often fly from perch to nearby perch and when they’re on the ground they seem to enjoy manipulating objects like twigs and leaves and nibbling on flowers. They interact with each other with the enthusiasm of youth. The problem for the photographer is that when they’re on the ground it’s virtually impossible to get a clear shot of them through all the vegetation. I really enjoy these little guys. Ron
Typically our first spring camping trip is a shake-down cruise for the trailer to Antelope Island. If anything goes wrong with the trailer (and it sometimes does after sitting all winter) I’ll be relatively close to home. This year we spent the last two days of March on the island. Most of the photos in this post were taken on that trip. 1/2500, f/6.3, ISO 500 There’s been a few Western Meadowlarks on the island for much of the winter but they’ve returned in large numbers now. In all my travels in the west I don’t think I’ve ever seen any other area with such a high concentration of this species. At times their beautiful song resonates all over the hills of the island. Meadowlarks always bring back fond memories for me of growing up on the Montana farm. 1/2500, f/6.3, ISO 500 Loggerhead Shrikes are another very common species, especially on the northern part of the island. They’ve been absent all winter but we’re seeing more of them on each visit now. It was cloudy when this image was taken and I didn’t get a lot of light in the eye but I think there’s just enough. 1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 500 I always look forward to the return of the Long-billed Curlews with great anticipation and they started appearing about 10 days ago. I was happy to get this shot of the male on the right displaying for the female. Male and female curlews are almost identical but they can be differentiated by their…
Photographing birds in flight in relatively low light (dusk, dawn, cloudy conditions etc) isn’t easy. In addition to the expected challenge of locking focus onto a fast and often erratically moving target, in low light you have the problem of getting enough shutter speed to get a moving subject sharp. A potential solution to the problem is “opening up” – increasing the size of the aperture, which is the same as reducing the f-number – say as in changing your setting from f/7.1 to f/5.6. This lets more light into the camera in the same amount of time, allowing for an increase in shutter speed to freeze the motion of the bird. Opening up however has another effect – reducing depth of field, so less of your subject is likely to be tack sharp. Another potential solution is to increase ISO. Increasing ISO in digital cameras has the effect of seeming to increase the sensitivity of the camera’s sensor to light so that faster shutter speeds can be used but the downside to increasing ISO is that it can increase digital noise in the image. Sometimes in bird photography fantastic opportunities with birds in flight present themselves in less than ideal light. Your best chance at an acceptable image under those conditions is to understand the interplay between your camera settings – how changing aperture affects shutter speed and depth of field and how changing ISO affects shutter speed and the production of digital noise. Male Northern Harrier, 1/1250 @ f/11, ISO 800 It’s not often I get a…
