![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/yellow-rumped-warbler-1194-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"yellow-rumped-warbler-1194-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nYesterday afternoon I found a butter-butt shooting gallery.<\/p>\n
On my way home from running an errand I impulsively checked out an old birding spot. It’s been almost entirely devoid of birds for many months so I fully expected more of the same. Boy was I wrong!<\/p>\n
It was literally swarming with migrating Yellow-rumped Warblers that were using an old dead tree as a launching platform as they hawked insects flying over water. They actually reminded me of the swarms of angry hornets I stirred up recently while I was mowing my lawn – they seemed to be everywhere.<\/p>\n
Thankfully they don’t sting and they weren’t angry, they were just hungry.<\/p>\n
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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n So I rushed home to get my birding camera and lens and had at it with the warblers.<\/p>\n There were gobs of birds but it was still tough shooting, largely because of messy and unattractive backgrounds and incredibly quick subject’s. My good friend Neil Rossmiller describes trying to photograph butter-butts as being similar to photographing popping corn. I like his analogy.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Since the settings were so busy and often unattractive I spent more time and effort than usual trying for takeoff shots to add extra interest. This was one of my few successes.<\/p>\n I still haven’t seen most of the photos I took but I wanted to report on my experience with so many warblers so I quickly picked out these two for today’s post. I’ve been seeing a few scattered butter-butts recently but nothing like my experience yesterday so local blog followers who are also bird photographers may want to be on the lookout for large numbers of migrating Yellow-rumped Warblers.<\/p>\n If you find them in the numbers I did you’ll have the time of your life.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n PS – I want to report more fully on what it was like photographing these warblers.<\/em><\/p>\n There were two of us inside my pickup photographing them. At times we had two or even three birds to choose from that were perched close to us. We were with them for 31 minutes and in that amount of time I took 1914 photos. I’m sure that between the two of us we took over 4000 shots in that half hour.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The shutter noise inside my pickup sounded like a war zone. All the sounds, including occasional and fervent cussing, reminded me of a couple of besieged soldiers in a foxhole fighting for their lives. I’m not kidding, I actually thought of that at the time. <\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/yellow-rumped-warbler-1338-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"yellow-rumped-warbler-1338-ron-dudley\\"")
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