Old school, shooting up on a subject makes them look more masculine. In the critter world, more majestic. Making a cow look more masculine might seem a stretch, but most don’t distinguish a cow from a bull, they just see a Bison. An easy way to accomplish this is to shoot from a lower angle. Getting down physically with Bison is not a smart idea, so we look for opportunities when they are on a slight hillside where we can shoot up on them safely. The best is the rarest occurrence, and that’s when they ridgeline. It’s a word I made up to quickly inform others that a critter is on the top of a ridge with only sky behind them, they should point their lens to make the shot. See, ridgeliner is faster than trying to say all of that in the heat of shooting. In this case, the background was the growing thunderheads of the Black Hills of SD. The drama, the light, it was simply breath taking and if I arranged all the elements correctly, that drama has been said. Or what I like to simply say, ridgeliner.

The “trick” I share with new birders to know it’s a Barn Swallow is by its tail. I tell them it’s a pitchfork for moving hay in the barn, Barn Swallow. A common species found throughout North America, these aerial speedsters come here for the spring to raise the next generation before heading back south. I’ve enjoyed their antics forever, but last week was the first time I spent time photographing them. A couple of pairs were busy building their nests on a couple of outbuildings in the Black Hills, a couple of log buildings. That got me to thinking, where did they nest before we built barns?

These are photos of the two different males at the two different nest sites on the two different buildings. Interestingly, both buildings had a large spike they could use for a perch. The challenge was to say “barn” without having their great pattern dominate the story. This required moving to the point of almost leaning against the building to throw it out of focus. The amazing MFD of the Z180-600 did the rest, allowing me to be just nine feet away. With sex in the air, the males couldn’t care less I was there. They went about trying their best to attract the females. Then comes time to cough up all those exoskeletons from all the insects they eat. I guess the females gotta do the same thing because the gagging routine didn’t seem to get in the way. They were so fun to spend time with all those days. I’m so glad we found a barn.

I’ve been smitten by the Snowcap for a long, long time! This color-packed bird is only 2.5″ (1/4″ bigger than the smallest in the world) in length, from tip to tip, making it the second smallest hummer in the world. My first time to see them, experience them, and photograph them was in 2024. And I wasn’t thrilled with the results I came back with, so I returned this year to improve on them. Being so small, they can be pushed around by other, larger species somewhat easily. This combination makes getting “the” shot I had in mind … challenging!

There was a hedge, a different locale from the one I worked in 2024 at Rancho Naturalista, where the Snowcap were being seen pretty regularly. For five afternoons, I haunted that hedge, a slave to my desire and the flight of the Snowcap, looking for that better image. The ISO on the Z 6III was hiked up to 1200, providing a shutter speed of 1/400 @f/8. They played with me, appearing at one spot which I would dutifully move over to only to have them move to another spot once I was set up at the first. Then I would get one in the viewfinder only to see a heartbeat later, and before I could depress the shutter release, it would be chased off. I was starting to think I would go back home empty-handed. Finally, the last afternoon, one male hovered for what seemed like a lifetime (in reality only for seconds), giving me a better shot than the previous year. The last shot I got was the one that I really liked. With one wing going right and the other going left, it perfectly describes photographing hummers. They just can’t give a guy a break!