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Birding > Bird photos? Or vice versa?

My start in both birding and photograph began in December of 2000.  I bought my first SLR camera, and was excited to go out and use it. I headed out on a cold, snowy day, looking for…something…to photograph, when I came across some Canada Geese around the small unfrozen edge of a local quarry.  From the start, birds were my most common photographic subject.  Soon, they were nearly my ONLY photographic subject.

While I loved shooting birds, for many years, my primary focus when going out was getting photos.  Seeing birds was certainly wonderful as well, but I tended to measure success of a trip in terms of how many “keeper” photos I got.  Even if I saw a rare bird, I was often disappointed when I was unable to get a photo of it.

Fast forward 18 years. I have photos for most species you could reasonably expect to see in South Dakota. I have photos for many species you would NOT normally expect in South Dakota. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve reached my saturation point for photos for many species, but in the last 3 or 4 years, things have changed. I was a photographer first, birder second.  Now, I’m definitely a birder first, photographer second.  I spend MUCH more time using my binoculars, scanning that far away bird to see if it’s a rarity.  In the past, I often ignored far away birds, as I knew I couldn’t get a good photo.  I think that’s what’s so nice about valuing BOTH the birds themselves, and the photography aspect.  When you go out on a trip, you’re rarely disappointed.

Here’s a few recent photos…

Yellow Warbler - Setophaga petechia

A curious Yellow Warbler. It’s been a very slow spring so far for migrating warblers, but as always, there’s never a shortage of Yellow Warblers around.

Harris's Sparrow - Zonotrichia querula

One of my favorite species, a Harris’s Sparrow. They are actually relatively easy to find here during migration.

Blue-winged Warbler - Vermivora cyanoptera

A Blue-winged Warbler, a rarity in South Dakota. However, there’s one specific spot of Newton Hills State Park where one or two breeding pairs are almost always found.

Northern Cardinal - Cardinalis cardinalis

I have a billion Northern Cardinal Photos. However, when you get an opportunity for these guys, even if it’s a relatively long-distance opportunity such as this one, you can’t pass it up! I’m starting to really appreciate shots like this, or other shots where the bird is smaller in the frame. That’s particularly the case if I’m able to show a lot of their natural habitat in the frame. Here, I just like the simple composition, the pose of the bird, the warm light, and that beautiful blue sky.

Good Birding, Bad Photos

It’s rare that you get that perfect day, where the birding is good and photo opportunities are bountiful.  Some days you won’t see many birds, but there are some great photo opportunities that make up for it.  Other days, you see lots of interesting birds, but they’re all camera shy, and good photo opportunities just don’t happen.  Yesterday was one of the latter kinds of days.  Good birding!  Bad Photos!

It is an opportunity to show people what the vast majority of bird photos look like!  If only every bird photo were crisp, in good light, with the bird clearly seen and in a good pose!  It’s not an exaggeration to say that I throw out 95% of the photos that I take.  Yesterday, there really weren’t any great long-term “keepers”, but below are some (bad) photos of some VERY interesting birds for the day.

Blackburnian Warbler - Setophaga fusca

A Blackburnian Warbler, a species you don’t see all that often here. Warblers in general are SO damn frustrating to try to photograph. This guy insisted on staying up towards the top of the canopy of some Burr Oaks. Since I see them so rarely, I still kept trying to get a “record” shot, but this is the best I could manage.

Blue-winged Warbler - Vermivora cyanoptera

We are on the VERY northeastern edge of the breeding range of Blue-winged Warblers, and the only place they seem to reliably be found is at Newton Hills State Park. There were at least 3 in the area yesterday, singing away and squabbling among each other. They’d occasionally chase each other and get close, but the only shot I was able to get was this one.

American Golden Plover - Pluvialis dominica

American Golden Plovers are a nemesis bird for me. Most years, people are saying they’re seeing them all over…and I never see any. When I DO see some, they’re inevitably very far away and I can’t get any photos. Well, the good news is yesterday I 1) saw a large group of about 75, and 2) got some photos. The bad news…this is as good as I could get. They weren’t particularly shy, but were VERY careful to stay just out of camera range.

Baltimore Oriole - Icterus galbula

I birded 6 hours yesterday. In all that time, in all the photo tries, this is by far the best photo I was able to get. It’s about the ONLY photo I was able to get where the bird “fills the frame”, and is quite sharp.  I could do without the thicket of sticks around him.  But on a crappy photo day…I’ll take it.

Photographing a non-existent bird

Photo of Blue-winged Warbler - Vermivora cyanoptera

A Blue-winged Warbler seen at Newton Hills State Park in South Dakota. Most sources would consider it to be very rare for the area, or an out-of-range vagrant. Thanks to “citizen scientists”, I think our understanding of bird distributions is going to be much improved in the coming years.

I visited Newton Hills State Park this week.  It’s a wonderful place to bird, and rarely fails to produce some interesting birds, particularly given that its an oasis of forest in a vast plain of corn and soybeans.  While walking along a path I heard what is now a familiar song, a buzzy quiet song that sometimes sounds like half insect, half bird.  Soon the source the song popped up on the top of a nearby cedar…a Blue-winged Warbler.  I was able to take quite a few decent photos of him before I moved on to find other quarry.

What’s always interesting about that spot in Newton Hills, and that species, is that they’re generally assumed NOT to be there.  Oh, among local birders, that particular spot is well known as “the”  place to find a Blue-winged Warbler in South Dakota.  However, if you look at field guides or other sources of bird information that provide range maps, southeastern South Dakota is either on the very extreme edge of the Blue-winged Warbler’s range, or it’s outside their normal breeding range.  Despite that, most years you can find a couple of pairs of Blue-winged Warblers breeding in this corner of Newton Hills State Park.

As always, I recorded the Blue-winged Warbler sighting in eBird, along with all the other birds I saw on that day.  If you’re not an eBird user, when you report a “rare” or unusual bird, the software flags it, and makes you enter a bit a detail about the sighting.  To further verify the identification, you can upload a photo that you may have taken of the bird.  EBird flagged Blue-winged Warbler as rare and unusual for the area, so I added a blurb about the very clear sighting, and also later uploaded a photo to accompany the report.

I’m in the habit now of entering eBird sightings most of the time when I go birding, but I’m still surprised sometimes when eBird flags a sighting as rare and unusual.  It does make you realize how incomplete our understanding is for even the most basic of characteristics of a given bird species…where they can be found.  There have been a number of times where I’ve casually entered a species in eBird, and have been surprised when eBird has flagged it as rare for the area.  Many times, it’s a species I’ve found in that area quite consistently.

I’ve brought up eBird here before, but as I photographed and reported what many sources consider to be a “non-existent” species for this part of the country, it does make you realize the power of “citizen science” and what a massive database such as eBird can do to improve our understanding of bird species distributions, migration timing, etc.

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