Your Bird Photographing Days Will Creep up on You
The mysterious and sudden urge to capture winged creatures on camera
One day you’re out shooting gritty urban scenes in black and white. Then you wake up one morning and suddenly you’re wondering what breed of bird is in squawking from your oak tree.
Don’t laugh. It happens to the best photographers, and it happens without warning. It’s like a switch flips in your head, and suddenly you point your camera at birds instead of models. You become an encyclopedia of avian knowledge, wowing people at dinner parties.
The lust for birding usually starts in the late 40’s/early 50’s stage of life, although it can happen to anyone at any time. You’ll find yourself selling off your slick 50mm f1.4 lenses to get yourself a 600mm f4.5 workhouse as to not disturb the cardinals while capturing their essence.
For me, it probably happened not long after I became a dad 11 years ago. I figured I might as well make the leap to adulthood and birding around the same time. However, I didn’t sell my nifty fifty in the process.
I started hiking with my son and carrying a 70-300mm, which is the most I could afford. I ventured out to the nature trails even in winter, where I got a photo of this female cardinal bracing itself against a cold wind.
I couldn’t feel my fingers through my gloves when I snapped this, and the ISO is quite high (3200 on a crop sensor doesn’t always work out), but I like it just the same. It was worth almost losing a couple of fingertips.
My neighbour and I recently put up bird feeders, mine specifically for hummingbirds that are supposed to be migrating through this part of Ontario in early to mid-May. However, our nectar concoction has not yet attracted one yet, or has managed to evade my sharp birding eye.
My camera twitches in anticipation—I’ve only ever been able to snap a hummingbird in Ontario’s cottage country, not in the urban fringes where I live.
My neighbour, however, is attracting quite a crowd with his seed-based feeder. We’ve seen male cardinals, and recently identified a grackle too. I did not know what a grackle was until my father-in-law, who is well into his birding years, suggested it from my description—black like a crow, but with a blue shimmer to its breast.
A Google search confirmed he is probably right. But up until then, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a grackle. Either I’m more attuned to bird names now, or they didn’t exist until recently. I suspect it’s the former.
There are some photogs I used to shoot in the city with occasionally, but I haven’t them in ages. That’s because they’re mostly in their 50’s, and have taken the next step: joining a birding group. There are a quite a few of them in Ontario, and I’m sure there are a lot of smaller groups that you need a secret password to be part of.
And get this: some of these birders don’t even bring cameras on group excursions. They’re happy spotting feathered friends through their high-powered binoculars, writing down notes about them in their birding journal.
For me, if I didn’t have a photo of the red-tailed hawk sitting on a gravestone, then it didn’t happen.
That being said, there’s no rule that says you have to bring your camera on bird sighting outings, but it’s quite satisfying to capture an image of a rare bird to impress the others. (At least I think it will be, I haven’t yet photographed a rare bird that I’m aware of.)
Just this morning, I found myself filming a bird emerging from my neighbour’s eaves. It’s probably obvious what species it is, and there’s probably a bird identification app I could lean on (there is this one from Cornell Lab, which can also identify species by sound.)
But I don’t want to take shortcuts. I want to become that old man that can point at any bird and say something like, “That’s a grey-beaked screeching mockinheimer. There are only about 100 left in North America, kids!”
I’ve got a long way to go before I get there—which gives me time to save up money for that $10,000 birding lens.
Loved these! For awhile, there were 3 red tailed hawks that flew around outside our window and my husband and I were so excited! They hung around for about a week, swooping and sailing with each other. Then they were gone. No pics, just a memory.
You’ve reached the bird watching years huh? Hahha