Show your Bird Portraits

[stevelee]

There is a reason this thread survives and grows - great shots continuously submitted from everyone.

Steve, you have to be educated! Once a long lens is purchased, assuming you love/appreciate nature the patience grows by leaps and bounds. Many things are too challenging if you don't have the appropriate tools. From what others have said it seems that the relatively inexpensive 400 5.6 might be worth considering (used?).

Thanks for the encouragement. Maybe it is more laziness than lack of patience. There are 5 or so acres of woods right behind my house, and my next door neighbor has bird feeders close to my house. I see lots of birds without going anywhere, so I'm not very motivated to go out birding. I do post to this thread on occasion, but nothing so spectacular as what else I see here. The rooster I shot in Hawaii was no challenge to my G7X II, but it was a pretty bird. The cardinals on the snowy tree were shot with my 24-105mm lens because that is what was on the camera, and I didn't want to risk their flying away while I changed lenses. And I shot through a window, since I figured they would fly when I opened the door, and I didn't want to stand out in the cold until they got hungry enough to come back.

I think I did post a link to the time-lapse video I shot with what passes for my telephoto lens of cardinals at the bird feeder. It starts to be interesting about 1:30 in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ-qQbVpEqA&feature=youtu.be I was mostly just using that to help me learn how to use the camera.

I do need to replace the old 75-300mm zoom some time, whatever I decide to do about photographing birds, although the lens did pretty well with my eclipse pictures on the T3i (before I got the 6D2). So I'll more likely get something of more general use than a longer prime.

So I'm inspired by the pictures I see here, just not inspired enough to emulate them. I might still post an occasion lazy man's bird portraits, however. So in that vein, here's a bad shot of a wet raptor I saw on the rail on my deck one day. I think I took this with my phone and didn't dare get even close to the window. I wanted a friend to tell me whether he knew what sort of hawk it might be:

 

[Eldar]

A cormorant drying his wings between fishing trips.

 

[HB]

Thanks for the kind words re. my images.
Steve, Patience is the Best tool a nature watcher/photographer can have, mine was honed monitoring raptor breeding performance here in Scotland, hours spent for just a few minutes of action most days. focus on your subject but enjoy the environment your in as well, sure top of the range equipment provides a better chance of success but nothing beats fieldcraft enabling you to get closer to your subject and less cropping for that neat portrait.
Harry.

 

[Click]

A cormorant drying his wings between fishing trips.

Nice.

 

[stevelee]

A cormorant drying his wings between fishing trips.

Nice.

So two wet birds in a row. I figure the hawk was on my deck because the trees were still dripping from the downpour.

 

[Jack Douglas]

Steve, if I were in your surroundings they'd have trouble keeping me inside.

Jack

 

[Ryananthony]

Eldar, Very nice photo of a neat looking bird.

 

[Ryananthony]

Steve, if I were in your surroundings they'd have trouble keeping me inside.

Jack

I was thinking the same.

In the last two days, I have got more images of Northern Harriers then all of my previous images put together.

1DX_6699 by Ryan Kelly, on Flickr
1DX_6572 by Ryan Kelly, on Flickr

 

[Jack Douglas]

V nice, Ryan. Seems like you've got better surroundings than me so I'm jealous but wait till I visit Bella Coola.

Jack

 

[ISv]

A lot of great shots when I was out of the site! Really tasty!
Hey, Jack - nice shots of "small birds in fly" - I take the message!
Here are mine from today (didn't find the bird I was looking for, took these just randomly, all of these are common birds around).

 

[Eldar]

A lot of great shots when I was out of the site! Really tasty!
Hey, Jack - nice shots of "small birds in fly" - I take the message!
Here are mine from today (didn't find the bird I was looking for, took these just randomly, all of these are common birds around).

Really nice ones ISv. Most of us would have loved to have these as "common" birds around

 

[Eldar]

Another one of the Dalmatian Pelican. A fascinating bird, with a lot of attitude and looks to kill.

 

[ISv]

A lot of great shots when I was out of the site! Really tasty!
Hey, Jack - nice shots of "small birds in fly" - I take the message!
Here are mine from today (didn't find the bird I was looking for, took these just randomly, all of these are common birds around).

Really nice ones ISv. Most of us would have loved to have these as "common" birds around

Thanks Eldar! But don't be jealous - I wish to have around the number of species you have at your place (and I bet 99% of them are not ever seen in the nature here - huh... if not more!).
On other hand - your pelican is something I have seen in Europe, impressive bird!

 

[Jack Douglas]

A lot of great shots when I was out of the site! Really tasty!
Hey, Jack - nice shots of "small birds in fly" - I take the message!
Here are mine from today (didn't find the bird I was looking for, took these just randomly, all of these are common birds around).

Really nice ones ISv. Most of us would have loved to have these as "common" birds around

Thanks Eldar! But don't be jealous - I wish to have around the number of species you have at your place (and I bet 99% of them are not ever seen in the nature here - huh... if not more!).
On other hand - your pelican is something I have seen in Europe, impressive bird!

Nice shots, you guys. For sure the grass is greener outside my fence but I try to remind myself it's also about being creative with what I have here to shoot. Here's some inspiration (not just birds).

http://www.wildencounters.net/favourites/

Jack

 

[jprusa]

Another one of the Dalmatian Pelican. A fascinating bird, with a lot of attitude and looks to kill.

Great photo Eldar.

 

[Click]

Another one of the Dalmatian Pelican. A fascinating bird, with a lot of attitude and looks to kill.

Great photo Eldar.

+1

Well done, Eldar.

 

[Ryananthony]

Wow Eldar, now that's a portrait.

 

[Nat_WA]

Ouch, Ryananthony, you make me so envious!
Those are beauties.
-r

Me too.

Jack

+1

(which feels like not sufficiently doing it justice )
Wiebe.

 

[Nat_WA]

I spent 3hrs yesterday waiting for a kingfisher to come in for image taking, plenty of flyby views but never close enough, the supporting cast provided entertainment to pass the time without being bored.

Sorry about you missing your kingfisher, but you captured the entertainment very nicely indeed
Especially like the long tailed twits - sooo cute

Wiebe.

 

[Nat_WA]

...

My very few sightings of the Belted left me in awe as to how anyone could get flight pictures and I still have that feeling. However, like anything in life, humans are humans and if something is being done there must be a way. Not to suggest it's easy by any means, so I'm all ears. I know with my chickadee flight shots of which a few were really good it had more to do with luck than my skill but it did involve scheming and lots of persistence with a plan that had merit.

After a few days of utter failure I had things tuned so that finally, in about 4 hours, I managed a couple half decent. Nothing new but here's one I don't think I posted before?? Of course one needs many birds for many opportunities and in this case a blind.

BTW, it should be pretty obvious that there was no tracking involved. I now have a Miops but not then, so there was no laser involved.

Jack

Nice approach to landing Jack! You can almost see it going to reverse thrust
Goes to show that practice makes perfect - with the perseverance needed to practice enough...

Wiebe.