A Pleasing Pose

Blue Jay in Winter

Capturing pleasing images of songbirds at my backyard bird feeding set-up in a pleasing pose is always a challenge. When I select perches to use I am always mindful of how I will position them during use. This is mostly because I prefer to capture the songbirds that frequent my set-up in such a pose whereby the tail feathers are not merging with the branch. Often the birds arrive on the perch and move about quickly, as a result I find it is best to pre-focus on the perch and when a suitable subject comes in for a landing a will fire off a burst of images. By doing so you are almost certain to capture an image with the tail raised up away from a merging position and you will likely get the head angle in a pleasing position too. One of the hardest birds to photograph at my set-up is the Northern Cardinal…try as I might I cannot get them up onto the perches, but they do frequent the snow covered ground below as they forage for any spilled seeds. Here are a few songbird images from my last sitting in the backyard photo blind a few days ago, as I took a break from my preparations for my upcoming trip to Cayman Brac in the Caribbean Sea. Hope you like the images 🙂

Please click on the images to see the larger, sharper versions.

Blue Jay in Winter

Blue Jay in Winter

Black-capped Chickadee in Winter

Female Northern Cardinal in Winter

 

 

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Winter Songbirds

 

I have been rather busy the last few days, but today I was able to get out to my photography blind in the backyard for some winter songbird imagery. The blind is a cozy place to photograph songbirds around my home. It is well insulated and equipped with a small heater for the coldest of days. A small feeding station and the ability to change perches as needed makes it relatively easy to capture these various songbirds in “different” situations. I also make a point of offering various foods for these birds, so that their diet is varied and I usually don’t stock it every day, thus forcing the birds to forage for food. The day before I plan to shoot I can fill up the feeder and the birds are there for me when I am ready.

I find songbird photography to be particularly challenging. Most of these birds are in and out of the feeding station quickly. Today, I shot about 225 images, after editing out the obvious ones, worthy of the recycle bin, I deleted images that for one reason or another didn’t work for me. In the end, I will be keeping about 10 images, the rest will be deleted.

The Black-capped Chickadee above and the Blue Jay below are both from today’s shoot and the final Chickadee image below is from a previous day. This little fella is showing signs of aggression towards another chickadee that landed at the feeding station. I love catching cool blur shots of birds at my feeding station.

Hope you like the images.

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