If you feed them, they will come...

I woke up this morning to a beautiful fresh snowfall. Every branch of every tree was covered in an inch or four of fine white powder. It was a perfect backdrop for photographing the local songbirds as they hung out in the trees waiting their turn at the feeder. What better way to spend a snow day, after all?

(click images to see larger versions)

Most birds are naturally very nervous, and dash off at the slightest sound, or movement. The trouble is that you need to get pretty close to song birds to photograph them well, unless you have a very powerful lens. Even with a 400mm lens you need to be closer than 10 feet from these tiny creatures to capture a good image.

The trick is to put out some feed, and find a comfortable place to sit/stand nearby. You might even put your camera on a tripod to ease the burden. Then you wait very quietly, and without making any unnecessary movements. If you have to move then you must do so very carefully, and without drastic motion. An alternative is to create a blind of course, but sometimes this isn't practical.


The birds will come, especially if there's snow, and they get used to you before too long and you can quietly work away. It's best to position yourself near a bush, or small tree which is close to where the feed is. The birds like to congregate in such places for safety, before they flit down and back with their food. Your photographs will have a much more natural look too.

A goldfinch with the beginnings of its spring plumage.

Also, it is important to use relatively high shutter speeds when photographing birds, as they move quickly, even when just nodding their heads. You'll need to use shutter speeds of 1/300th sec at a minimum, and faster than 1/1000th sec if you want to capture a bird in flight without too much motion blur. You will also have to bias your exposure setting by at least +1.0 f-stop in order to get a good exposure of the bird when photographing against the bright snowy background. I actually used +1 1/3 for some of the images here.

This little bird puffed its feathers out to cope with the cold. I think it's a female goldfinch, but am not quite sure.

A little house finch in the dogwood tree.

Eastern bluebird.

A nuthatch clings to the dogwood's trunk.

Eastern bluebird.

A cheeky little nuthatch!

In closing, it's important to note that birds will be desperate to feed when it snows. You should never disturb them from feeding at times like this, because it might mean the difference in their surviving the day.

A clear indicator that you are disturbing the birds is if they fly off at the sound of your shutter every time it clicks. You must stop, and leave them be if this happens and find a more stealthy way to create your photography... or get a bigger lens. I've never found this to be a problem in the suburbs, where the birds are used to being fed by humans. It's a different story in the wilder areas though, and may require you to build a blind, and maybe even use a "blimp" to quiet the shutter... Alternatively, if you have a modern DSLR, you can photograph in "live view", which is much quieter (as the internal mirror will be stowed already... it's the mirror movement which creates most of the noise in a digital SLR anyway). Good luck with your efforts!