Feb. 28, 2016 - Texas - Birds in Flight

Last week I attended a four-day bird photography workshop at Laguna Seca Ranch in Edinburg, Texas. One of the techniques we learned was photographing birds in flight. The first time we tried this method, I took 400 shots and this Mockingbird image was the only one that was good enough to keep. Obviously, I needed more practice!

MockingbirdNorthernflightLagunaSecaRanchEdinburg20160219

Here’s a quick explanation of the technique. Set up a perch about 15 to 20 feet away from a small feeder. Put your camera on a tripod. Position it perpendicular to the line between the perch and the feeder. Manually focus your camera on a spot along this line, preferably close to the feeder. Use a remote shutter release. When the bird takes off from the perch, hold the shutter open until the bird lands on the feeder. With the speed of today’s cameras, you can take several shots before the bird lands. Most of the photos will be discarded but you hope that a few will have the bird in just the right position to get a nice photo. This is a female Red-winged Blackbird.

BlackbirdRedwingedfemaleflightLagunaSecaRanchEdinburg20160220

When you take photos of birds in flight, a very fast shutter speed is needed. I set my camera at 1/3200 second. At that speed, you can freeze the movement of the bird’s wings. Here’s a female Pyrrhuloxia.

PyrrhuloxiafemaleflightLagunaSecaRanchEdinburg20160220

This Long-billed Thrasher looks like it hit some turbulence. Perhaps this was caused by a gust of wind.

ThrasherLongbilledflightLagunaSecaRanchEdinburg20160220

Our last afternoon session was fully devoted to practicing flight shots. I took 1702 photos but only kept 116 of them (about 7%). Maybe two dozen of them were really nice shots, so, more practice did help. Here’s another look at a Long-billed thrasher.

ThrasherLongbilledflightLagunaSecaRanchEdinburg20160220

The goal of this method is to get photos of birds with their wings fully spread out. I think it’s also interesting to see the bird as its wings fold just before landing. This is a Golden-fronted Woodpecker.

WoodpeckerGoldenfrontedflightLagunaSecaRanchEdinburg20160220

The Green Jay is Diana’s favorite bird. I got a good shot of this one with its wings fully spread.

JayGreenflightLagunaSecaRanchEdinburg20160220