Page 22 - Backyard Bird Photography: How to Attract Birds to Your Home and Create Beautiful Photographs

I can sit on to rest, but I only perch on this seat for a few minutes at a time, because at any

moment, the oriole can fly directly to either the feeder pole above the feeder or even onto
the feeder itself. By this time, it is too late for me to stand up and place my hands on the
camera. The oriole will see this movement and fly off.

I have spent many wonderful hours standing in this corner photographing the Hooded
Orioles. I love listening to them chucking and chucking as they approach the garden, then
the chucking sound gets really loud when they land on the feeder pole and get ready to

drop down onto the feeder itself. Sometimes, especially in August and early September, it
gets extremely hot in this corner, and one year it was so hot that I lost my concentration
and I thought I was placing the Digital Rebel camera with the 200–400mm lens and the
1.4x teleconverter onto the tripod head, but instead I latched the camera into thin air, then
let go, and the camera fell first onto the window stool, a little over a foot above the floor
(leaving a one-inch dent), and then onto the tile floor itself. I was in shock, but the camera

was not damaged, and I attached it properly to the tripod and kept shooting.

In the case of my hummingbird and oriole photographs, you may wonder how I know
that the bird will land on a certain perch of the feeder every time. After all, panning across
the feeder with my camera would likely scare off my subject at such close quarters, and
besides it wouldn’t result in the composition I desire.

Bullock’s Oriole
Here’s a little trick. I place a white adhesive label on the outside of the feeding holes
where I don’t want the bird to go. Or with the hummingbird feeder, I may place blue

painter’s tape under the feeder holes. Sometimes I leave more than one feeder hole open,
just in case an interesting composition arises and I am willing to take the chance of
panning to my subject. With the hummingbird feeder, this may result in a shot taken with
the hummingbird perched on the opposite side of the feeder and looking directly at me,
instead of a profile; and with the oriole feeder, this might produce a photograph in which

the oriole is positioned across the feeder in the foreground, instead of off to the side.
Similarly, leaving the feeder hole closest to me open on the hummingbird feeder may
result in the hummingbird perching with his back to me.