A female Chaffinch, Fringilla coelebs, banking as she comes in to land on a seed feeder.
Photographing small birds in mid-air is famously difficult. For most of us mere mortals, by the time you see them in your viewfinder, then depress the shutter, the bird has long gone, and your photo shows, at best, the tip of the tail. Panning, which works with large birds like herons, is much less successful when trying to track small passerines.
One way of accomplishing it is to set up an electronic ‘beam’, which the bird flies through, effectively taking its own photograph, though the photographer has selected the position and background.
Not being of a highly technical bent, I’ve been practising the other method, which is pre-focussing at a distance from a feeder, then photographing the birds as they fly in to feed. Even here, of course, you can’t wait until the bird flies into your viewfinder. Certainly my reactions aren’t fast enough. I have to keep my eye open for birds approaching. This is easiest if there’s a tree to the same side of the feeder as you’re focussing. A proportion of birds will perch first of all on the bush or feeder, and as soon as you see them take off, you start clicking and hope your motordrive will catch something of interest.
Even this method is quite ‘hit or miss’. There’s no guarantee that the bird will fly though the limited area that your telephoto lens covers. Even if it does, I find a lot of ‘part birds’ as they shoot through between clicks, a lot of ‘no birds’ frames, a surprising number of photos where the bird is looking away (you’d think they’d be looking ahead, towards the feeder) and many pics where the wing is covering the bird’s eye. In the old days of slides, this would have been prohibitively expensive. Out of every hundred attempts, I consider myself lucky if I get five ‘decent’ images, where the bird is whole, in focus and I can see the eye.
I personally prefer if the wings have some movement in them, but other photographers prefer even the wingtips to be completely sharp. That’s a matter of taste.
This image is copyright © Liz Leyden, all rights reserved.
It is for sale as wall art or as various home or personal accessories at Pixels.com.
My photo of a female Chaffinch in flight is also available as a to purchase as a stock photo from iStock.
