Photographing nesting birds is a really entertaining, informative, and rewarding past time! You have to be on top of your game to safeguard the nest and come away with the photograph. This extensive video goes through the biology, technology and combining it to get the shot. It’s a twenty-minute video so I cover it all thoroughly so you can be successful you’re first time out. Enjoy!
White-tailed Deer
captured by D6 / 180-400VR
I was literally sitting there with my Bins up to my eyes trying to figure out what the heck the bird was across the field at The Ranch when Sharon said, “What are you looking at?! “There’s our first fawn!” I put the bins down to see our first White-tailed Deer fawn had just wlked up in front of us forty feet away and was beginning to nurse! Bambi was drawn from a White-tailed Deer fawn which is why we call them Bambis and it was so cute! This was the first time I’d ever had the opportunity to get glass on one, so off I dashed!
White-tailed Deer
captured by D6 / 180-400VR
The D6 / 180-400VR is always left set up at The Ranch because there are always critters about it. We’d seen the mom go off into the sage on our hillside earlier that morning and wondered if today was the day. It was now late evening when she emerged with her new offspring. With camera in hand, I snuck through the house trying to get the shot. The windows I could see the pair through were closed and screens were still in place (no long I might add) so I headed to the garage side door and slowly opened it. It had a squeak (no more, thanks WD40) so I went real slow. I raised the D6 to my eye and squeezed off a couple of frames just before it stopped nursing. It wasn’t the best shot, not thrilled with the background nor the position of the mom’s ears but it broke the jynx, I now have my own Bambi photos. We have a couple more pregnant White-tailed and one Mule Deer doe walking The Ranch show if I’m lucky, I’ll do better later. Going to be fun trying!!!!
Northern Sea Otter
captured by D6 / 180-400VR
It was a week of complete otter satisfaction! If you’ve read my book Captured, you know that my love affair with the Teddy Bears of the Sea goes way back decades. Having the good fortune to spend an entire week with them was truly special. We traveled up to Alaska working the large congregation of them in K Bay. Seeing rafts that numbered in the hundreds is a site of my career and one I’ll never forget. It was very heartwarming!
Our trip was focused on the time mom is with young pups but we ended up seeing a whole lot more biology than just that. Adorable their entire life, otters are they’re cutest when really young. This 8-10 month old pup is at that stage when riding on mom’s belly isn’t practical anymore so more often floats alongside mom. The pup is able to swim with her underwater and grab its own meal but like any kid, prefers mom feeding it. They prefer the quieter water of back bays which photographically is ideal. The water is smooth and reflects the world around them providing a clean sweep. I shot the entire time with the D6 / 180-400VR (loaded with ProGrade CFExpress) adding 13342 images to my otter files from the week. This is just one of the hundreds of favorites I came back with. In fact, Sharon has decided one wall at The Ranch is now going to be the otter wall. So I need to go, lots of printing to do!
Pigeon Guillemot
captured by D6 / 180-400VR
I really wasn’t looking for the shot, I’m up in Alaska working with Sea Otters. But I love Pigeon Guillemots with their bright red feet and squeely high pitched call. So when I saw this one floating by, it was real simple to throw the D6 / 180-400VR on it and get the shot. It took a matter of seconds, I really didn’t “look” at the scene, just the Pigeon Guillemot. Then back at the computer, I looked at the water and I fell in love with the reflections. It’s a real simple click. Just sometimes, the background just surprises you!
Red-breasted Nuthatch
captured by D6 / 180-400VR
Six days after we moved to The Ranch, I had all our nesting boxes up in place. Four days later I saw Red-breasted Nuthatches checking one of them out. Now understand, it never happens that way! Birds don’t find nesting boxes days after you put them up, they just don’t. More to the point, they just don’t move in either that fast. Cavity nesters tend to spend weeks and weeks checking out possible sites and then, they start to excavate. But here it was unfolding before our eyes, these nuthatches were definitely taking up residence in our nesting box. How fun!
I grabbed my copy of Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Bird and looked up the nesting biology of the Red-breasted Nuthatches. They incubate for about 12 days and are nestlings for about 16 days. I knew this clock was ticking yet life swept me away and I lost total track of time. We’d been seeing lots of activity, I kept saying I need to stop and shoot, but I just didn’t make the time. Then this morning my biologist friend said, “you do know how rare it is for a nuthatch to use a nesting box?” I knew it but it never really sunk home these past two months. That’s when I ran out with my bins to watch the nest box in panic. No activity! Was I too late???
After an appointment in town and a Zoom with friends, I sat down to shoot. I didn’t know if I was wasting my time or not. I thought I was too late, the chicks had fledged. I was still seeing no activity. I set up the D6 / 180-400VR eight feet from the box remotely shooting with the WR-R10. I was sitting about forty yards away. With bins in hand, I sat and watched. After a bit of time, I saw a nuthatch and a few moments later, it zoomed into the box. Over the next ninety minutes, both adults were busy feeding, removing fecal sacks, and then feeding some more. As you’re reading this, I’m out at the box for what should be their last day. If I’m lucky, and I mean real lucky, I’ll capture the kids fledging. I say I’ll be real lucky because I thought I was too late!
Oriental or Breadseed Poppy
captured by D6 / 14-24AFS
Yep, it’s a flower photo on my blog, what the state of Montana officially calls an Opium Poppy and it’s blooming all over the ranch! A native of Turkey and Iran, how it got to the ranch is a mystery. We’ve not mowed a vast majority of the back nine cause we didn’t know all that was growing there. We saw these plants growing and I thought they were some type of thistle. Then the buds started to appear and my mind said opium plants! Na, how could that be. Then today when I was out with our Red Fox, I saw the first blossom to open. I used the marvelous PictureThis app which told me it’s an Oriental Poppy. I grabbed the D6 / 14-24AFS (the blossom is larger than the front element of the 14-24) took some shots and then came into the web to learn more. There I learned it’s the Opium Poppy, legal to let grow and that the state describes it as an “Annual with glabrous and glaucous foliage.” It won’t make a macro photographer out of me, but they are darn purdy!