Backyard Bird Photography by Mathew Tekulsky

Author:Mathew Tekulsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Hooded Oriole

A couple of hours later, the fledgling flew up into a tree alongside the patio and since the bird was directly above me, I could not tilt my tripod back far enough to point my camera up at the bird. In addition, I couldn’t move back because the pool was directly behind me. Therefore, I took the camera off the tripod, placed the body of the camera on my forehead to stabilize it, and pointed the 180mm macro lens with the 1.4x teleconverter and the flash attachment up at the tiny bird. It wasn’t the most ideal circumstance, but I got a record of that fledgling on its first foray out into the world.

For a number of years I photographed the Hooded Orioles through a picture window in my TV room. For some reason, it never dawned on me that I could take a screen out of the sliding glass window area and photograph directly to the outside, using the TV room as a blind. When I finally did this a few years ago, the quality of my oriole photographs increased dramatically. The Hooded Oriole by now has become accustomed to this opening in the window, and to the noises of the camera from inside the house, but it took many years for him to realize that he was in no danger being so close to me. Still, the female rarely visits the feeder when it is less than ten feet from the open window.

The setup of the blind is very simple. I place my tripod in the corner of the room, and I cover the open area of the front window with an unfolded cardboard box from the floor up to just below the camera, then pull the window shade down from the top, leaving me a small area in which to photograph. I also place an unopened cardboard box along the window on my right side so that the tripod’s black rubber feet do not leave marks on the white floor molding. The window shade on this window prevents the birds from seeing me as they fly from their palm tree on the canyon side of the yard over to the patio in the main part of the yard, where the oriole feeder is located. In order to make sure that the wind does not blow back the cardboard, I place a few plastic bins (containing some birdfeeding items to give them weight) on top of each other, so that the top bin can be pushed against the top section of the cardboard to keep it in place. The tripod legs secure the cardboard on the bottom, but when the wind blows up at about 3:00 p.m. every day, the cardboard at the top may be blown back from time to time and I have to straighten it up again by pushing in the plastic bins and the tripod legs. Just behind the tripod, I have a barstool that I can sit on to rest, but I

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