Every year my wife, Faye, has a number of bird feeders in our front yard so she can sit down at her dining room table in the morning, drink her coffee, read the paper and watch the birds. Actually she has feeders year round but we get different guests in the spring.
This morning I took the opportunity to photograph some of them. The last two shots are of a female Western Tanager, earlier this week I saw the male with his head bright red in full mating plumage, but I haven't seen him for a few days now. Hopefully I will yet have a chance to photograph this fellow. I will also have to photoshop the Christmas light out of the last picture when I have some time.
Now, I have to say bird photography is not as easy as it may seem. Especially with these little fellows who are hyper and don't stay still for a moment. Auto focus doesn't work as you just don't have time to focus and re frame the picture. These were all shot manually with the lens (450mm equivalent) wide open (f4.0 at 1/500 second @ ISO 200) and set to manual focus. The camera (actually the lens) is mounted on a tripod, with the tension on the ball head set so that it will hold the camera and lens in place but still allow you to move the gear to compose your shot. One hand is on the focus collar, the other on the grip with your finger on the shutter release and you have to compose focus and shoot in one motion as you have only a fraction of a second for this. It takes a practiced skill to do this and I am still working on that.
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