in as little words as possible: June 2010

birds.

Great Crested Flycatcher

While visiting my family on Cape Cod for Father's Day, my mother told me about a pair of birds that had been keeping a nest in a birdhouse near our driveway. Situated near Old Silver Beach and Wild Harbor, their home in North Falmouth, MA is a birder's paradise. The shallow water invites Herons and Egrets to hunt among the reeds while two, perhaps more, pairs of Osprey keep their nests. One nest even sits atop a telephone pole directly opposite my parents 2nd floor porch.

Even with all the subject matter, I tend not to shoot birds because 1) I'm never still enough, 2) they always fly away when I'm ready to make the photo & 3) I do not have the patience to wait for them to return.

However, this case was different due to frequency at which the birds visited the nest to feed the young( every 3 - 5 minutes), its height off the ground (placed about four feet off the ground in a flower garden) and no foliage obstructing the view which setup some pretty optimal shooting conditions (for me, the amateur bird photographer).

Grabbing my 200 2.8 and my 1D, I posted up behind my truck in the driveway and got a few ok shots, nothing that I was to excited about (See Below).

When I repositioned closer to the nest, the birds would rarely approach and instead perch on the utility wires above and call to its young.

(Click here to hear its calls)

I was, however, able to approach the nest without harassment from the adults and wave my fingers near the opening to birdhouse causing the chicks to open their mouths, thinking that it was feeding time.

While these were ok, I was hoping to get a photo of both the adults and chicks in the same frame. To do this by standing close to the nest with a wide angle would be impossible. The only feasible way would be to position my camera on a tripod next to the birdhouse and trigger the shutter remotely.

The Solution:

I downloaded the onOne DSLR Camera Remote for my iPad and tethered my Canon to my laptop via firewire which I placed at the foot of the tripod. From my garage, I was able to use the LiveView function and wait for the bird to approach, releasing the shutter without scaring away the subject.

The Result: