Bird Watching: What Kind of Camera Do You Use?, 1 by bgrumbin

bgrumbin wrote:
Here's a couple of the guys, ravens who are ubiquitous out here in the High Desert, enjoying some of the certified 100% natural wild bird seed that I provided for them. As with some other kinds of birds, they rarely sit still long enough to get a clear image of them unless one is feeding them. Their coloring is such that mostly one gets "silhouette" pictures trying to photograph them at any distance at all.

My reason for the feeding is a combination of a growing liking for those life forms with a "trick" that another photog I met in a regional state park in Washoe County Nevada taught me with the Stellar's jays and squirrels and chipmunks there. Provided with some feed in a location that they feel safe in, they ignore side distractions such as a photog paying attention to them. Reason I emphasize "they feel safe" is that I have tried the trick in places that "looked" ultimately safe from my viewpoint (apparently hawks or other predators made it unsafe from their viewpoint) and had them ignore the food while a grotesquely *unsafe* location a mere 100 feet or so away (in the middle of the in/out driveways through the area) seemed to them a lovely place to have food provided ;).