Shorebirds of the Northern Hemisphere

One of the goals of any nature photographer is to have an image published. I have had several of my images published on web sites, presentations, magazines, and books. My winning image titled “The Chase” was recently published in the Spring 2009 edition of Audubon of Florida’s magazine Florida Naturalist (PDF).

However, I’ve always thought of my style of wildlife photography to lean towards publication in some sort of guide book. Much of my youth was spent pouring through field guide after field guide on birds and reptiles and it has undoubtedly had an influence on my work as a nature photographer. So I am pleased that one of my juvenile Black-necked Stilt images from last summer was selected and recently published in the guide Shorebirds of the Northern Hemisphere by Richard Chandler. The book itself is a terrific guide to shorebirds, showing images of both young and adult birds as well as many behavioral images including flight for many species.

Finally I’ve just published an article “Tips on learning how to photograph Birds in Flight” over at the Everglades Photographic Society web site. I’m planning for it to be part one in a series of three updated articles on photographing birds in flight.

Limpkin Park

There’s a whole new rock band over at Green Cay. Four Limpkin chicks (Aramus guarauna) have been keeping visitors and photographers busy with their antics. I was told that five chicks originally hatched about a week ago, but now there are only four. Unfortunately that’s how nature works by weeding out the weaker ones, so the stronger ones survive to perpetuate the species. I was surprised at how aggressive the little chicks are toward each other. Although they huddle close for comfort and protection, when the parents are around the little ones really push, peck, and tug at each other.



The Limpkin is usually placed in its own family group, and although it looks somewhat like an Ibis it is much more closely related to rails and cranes. Easily recognized by its loud echoing call; Limpkins in Florida were almost hunted to extinction for food. Like the Snail Kite, Limpkins feed primarily on the Apple Snail (Pomacea spp.) and has benefitted from the introduction of South American Apple Snails into the South Florida ecosystem from the aquarium trade. In fact almost all the Apple Snails in Green Cay are of the nonnative South American variety.

Speaking of which, one of the earliest birds to return from South America, is North America’s largest Swallow, the Purple Martin. The nest boxes at Green Cay are starting to fill up with Purple Martins which usually arrive in late January and early February. At the moment these birds are battling the European Starlings which compete with the Martins for their nest boxes. Here is a species that has come to rely on man for its survival. The colonies found in Eastern North America now rely almost exclusively on birdhouses built for them to nest. Unlike their Western counterparts, the Eastern Purple Martin population could be seriously threatened if their nest boxes were removed.

With their fairly predictable flight pattern and their close proximity to the Green Cay and Wakodahatchee boardwalks, the Martins make great subject to practice advanced flight shot photography. You have a relatively small and fast bird, so you’ll have to lead your target well. Because of how dark the Martins are you’ll have to dial in a +1 to +1.5 stop exposure compensation for their color to come out, especially against a clear blue sky. However, when these birds fly low enough to allow for a green background, then your shutter speed is going to plummet if you are in aperture priority (Av) mode, so it’s better to use Manual exposure (M).

Reader Mail Part 1 - Flight Photography

I was out with my new Canon 400mm f/5.6 L lens and got some great flight shots. I had it set in aperture priority, ISO 400 at f/7.1. In some of the shots, the shutter speed went up to 1/4000s, which is not good. Any suggestions on how to bring the shutter speed down?

Getting your shutter speed down is easy. Simply dial in a smaller aperture (f/8 or higher) or lower your ISO. Since during flight shots the background is mostly blue sky, you'll get very fast shutter speeds on a sunny day. Watch out for when a bird flies lower and your background turns green, as your shutter speed will dramatically drop. In general I try to keep my shutter speed between 1/800 and 1/2000. At 1/2000 if the background changes and the shutter speed drops, I'm not so worried that I'll get a blurry shot.

I really need your help. I was not happy with any of my flight shots of the harrier. I know you shoot RAW and had the Canon 300mm f/2.8 IS L lens, but I was wondering, how did your pictures come out? The pictures I took of the harrier, none were sharp and the head was dark.

My images of the harrier were alright. I had three passes total yesterday and I was able to adjust the camera settings a little each time to get better results. About 50% of my images of the harrier were in focus. It was a bit more of a challenge using the Canon 300mm f/2.8 IS L lens plus Canon 2x converter because that combination makes focusing a bit slow, somewhat like the Canon 100-400mm f/3.5 – 5.6 IS L lens.

I found from the previous passes that the sky was very bright making the harrier very dark, so I added +1 exposure compensation to bring more details out in the bird. To get it as bright as I wanted I had to further adjust the exposure in the RAW image about another +1/4 stop. That makes the image a bit washed out, and then I had to adjust the blacks and contrast back in. RAW makes processing more flexible.

I was wondering what you do if you get a bird flying and it is full frame. When you go to print it, how do you print it without cropping and cutting off some of the wing or if is too close to the edge to mat?

I believe what your asking has to do with the image's aspect ratio. Canon cameras create files in the 3x2 format (more commonly known as 6x4), which is fine if you are printing images with the same ratio (i.e. 3x2, 6x4, 12x8, 18x12, etc). However, if you print to a different format, say 11x 14 you'll end up cropping part of the image. So if you have something that is full frame and tight, you'll cut off part of the image you want to keep. There are a couple ways to get around this. The first is when printing, in Adobe Photoshop, I use the scale to fit media check box. This will fit the image on to the paper size but you'll get white borders around the image. The other method I use only works if you have a clean background such as an almost solid green on blue. Use the canvas dialog in Photoshop to add more canvas around the image so that you get an aspect ratio of 14x11 (or 11x8.5, etc). Then use the clone tool to clone in the background of the original image to the blank part of the canvas.