Birding tip #7: There are those times when you have been enjoying a productive day photographing birds and then things go quiet. No songs, no calls, not a bird in sight. The minutes tick by. So you decide to pack it in.
Don’t do it. At least not before trying my fool proof method of attracting birds that may provide you with the best bird composition of the entire day. The trick: Put on a wide angle lens. The wider the lens, the better the results. That is the method I used to capture this Hermit Thrush in Madera Canyon, Arizona.
Teri and I broke for lunch after spending a productive morning pursuing birds along the Vault Mine Trail, then headed for home. On our way out of the canyon we decided to stop and try our luck at the Whitehouse Picnic Area.
At the parking lot I paused to listen for birds. Nothing. I scanned for movement in the trees around the perimeter of the parking lot. Nothing. We sauntered down-canyon about a half mile toward the Proctor Trailhead. Nothing. I decided to do some landscape photography.
While switching to a wide angle lens, I said to Teri, “Watch, as soon as I get this lens switched out, there will be birds all over the place.”
I placed the telephoto in it’s case, then in to my pack. Then this bird flies by, into the shadow beneath an oak tree about forty feet away. We both raise our binoculars, and Teri says, “A Hermit Thrush”. I’m out of the blocks. I unzip the pack, remove caps from the lens, exchange the lenses, increase the ISO, turn exposure bracketing off, turn off the shutter delay, and mount the camera to the tripod. Meanwhile, the thrush while foraging in the grass and leaves, has doubled the distance between us. Dang! I can see movement in the viewfinder but there is a lot of grass, branches, and rock, between me and that thrush. Dang!
Finally, after about five minutes, he flies to the top of a rock. Reacting as fast as I can before he moves on, I start making exposures. I was in matrix focus mode and I could hear the camera focusing with each shot. Dang!
I made three exposures before he flew off, never to be seen again. One focused on the trees behind the bird, one focused on the blades of grass in front of the bird. And luckily, one on the bird. Bingo!