My wife’s a birdwatcher. When we hike together she’s usually looking up with binoculars in hand while I’m looking around with camera in hand. I’ve never made much of an attempt to photograph birds because they’re usually small, far away, and they move around too much. I’m often impatient and don’t have the right camera gear. So, we’ve never really connected. However, a trip to Everglades National Park changed all of that.
There are over 350 species of birds in Everglades National Park. But, it’s not the number of species that grabs your attention, it’s the fact that the birds are big and close and often just sit or wander slowly around as if they are posing for photographs. I soon realized that it was great fun to photograph birds — these birds, at least. They’re in the trees. They’re on the ground. They’re in the water. They’re in the air. They’re, well, everywhere.
Most of these photographs were taken with a 70-200 mm lens. That’s not exactly the lens that bird photographers would use, but when placed on an APS-C body with a 1.6 crop factor, it’s more than enough to capture images of big birds sitting right next to you. The Anhinga photo was taken with a 17-85 mm lens, so you can get good photos even without a long lens.
I’m not saying that I plan to take up bird watching, but I must admit that I no longer assume that birds aren’t my kind of subject matter.
(Click on any photo to enlarge, then use arrows to scroll through the images.)