Photographing Birds on the Farm

ByMatt
Fox Sparrow Fox sparrow Passerella iliaca White-crowned Sparrow White-crowned sparrow Zonotrichia leucophrys Northern Cardinal Northern cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis Today I took the camera out to photograph the birds. We’ve got a feeder in the front yard, but all the birds flock to the seed spilled on the ground. So I threw the dogs inside, scattered a can of seed on the ground, sat and waited. It didn’t take long for the birds to come in. Around the farm, I’ve been mostly seeing the usual winter birds: Cardinals, Chickadees, Titmice, Carolina Wren, Junco, Song Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, and some non-feeder birds: American Crow, Raven, Black and Turkey Vultures, Red-tail Hawk, Belted Kingfisher, Eastern Bluebird, American Robin, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Northern Flicker, and so forth.

During today’s photo shoot, I discovered that we have more sparrows on property than I originally thought. While going through the pictures, I identified Fox Sparrow and White-crowned Sparrow, both of which are uncommon according to the Sibley field guide.

If I learned anything from this photo session, it’s that my lens, the Canon EF-s 18-200 is not very good on the long end. The images are surprisingly sharp, but Chromatic Aberration is difficult to work with, Autofocus is inaccurate much of the time, and it’s really just not long enough for photographing small birds. Someday, I will have a Canon 100-400. But at least this lens is better than my old 70-300.

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