Hey Everyone,

I’m just back from St. Paul Island, AK in the middle of the Bering sea.
I co-led a workshop with Greg Downing and had 10 participants.
We managed to photograph all of the breeding species of birds for the Island, including the four species of Songbirds that make the Island their home.
Below is an image of a few of the participants that are set up on a large piece of drift wood. The driftwood had some wonderful lichens grownig on it and it made a beautiful perch.

Below is a couple of images of the birds on the drift wood.

Gray-crowned Rosy Finch

Lapland Longspur

Winner of WildBird Magazine’s 22nd Annual Photo Contest

I was happy to find out that I won first place in the “Shorebird” category.
This was the category I wanted to win, as the prize is a fantastic pair of Zeiss Binoculars.
The winning images are in the September/October issue.

Magazine Covers

I have two cover images coming out this month.

The September/October issue of WildBird.

The July/August issue of Birding.

In this collage of images on the cover, I have the two bottom images.
The cover is also a foldout with a flap.

That’s it for now. I’m heading to the Pribilof Islands, Alaska, on Thursday with Greg Downing.
We will be Co-leading a workshop with 10 participants. See you all when I get back. Alan.

I now have my 2011 workshops dates available.
I will be doing them at the Casa Santa Ana in South Texas. This is a beautiful B & B with grounds that back up to the Santa Ana National Wildlife refuge. It is about 20 mins from McAllen.
We will be spending 3 mornings at the feeder setups, and the evenings at the local refuges and State Parks. One evening we will be doing some mulit-flash Buff-bellied Hummingbird photography.
3 days, 4 people.

For more details click here:

To see what you will be facing each morning, check out this footage that I shot there this past Feb.

I am also doing two workshops in Roma, TX where I have been doing them for the past few years.

For details, click here:

Contact me with any questions,

Alan.

For years I have been wanting to get an image of a Bluebird on a natural tree cavity.
The chances of finding a nest cavity that is low enough to the ground for photography is slim, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.
The first step was scouting for a dead tree that had limbs with either a hollow or a soft center.
Once a tree was located, tapping on the limb will let you know if the wood is solid or soft.
After finding the right limb, I cut off a 3 foot section and took it home.
To make the stump hollow enough for a bird to nest in it, I used a screw-driver to chip away at the soft wood inside.
I stopped removing the inside wood, when I got to about 4 inches from the bottom.

Below is an image looking down into the hollowed out stump.

Once the stump was hollowed out, a wood cap was then placed on each end on the stump. The lower cap acted as a base to attach a stand.
The top cap is removable to allow cleaning of the next box after breeding season is over.
I also chose a good spot on the side of the stump to drill a two inch hole for the birds to enter.

Below is a close up of the stump with the two caps and the entrance hole.

Mounting the stump on a pole and placing it away from my fence made it attractive to the local Bluebirds.

It only took a couple of days before the Bluebirds were checking out the new nest box.
The next challenge was the background that I wanted in the image.
My yard is small with limited backgrounds that have shadows and a busy fence.
To get around that problem, I made a board out of 4 printed images and pasted them on some foam core. Using a stand, the foam core background was raised to the desired height.

In the image below, you can see the nest box, the printed background, and the location of my camera.

Now I was ready to take some images.

After covering my self and photo equipment with Kwik Camo (a camo sheet that has a mesh screen to see out of) I waited for the bluebirds to return.

Below is the final result that I had envisioned.

Many times when the female would enter the cavity, the male would hover outside providing for some fun flight shots.

My next project with the nest box started a few weeks later when my peach tree was in full bloom.
I wanted an image of a perched Bluebird with a Spring time feel to it.
The peach tree in my front yard donated some limbs to this project

Placing a limb in front of the next box provided a perch for the bird. Choosing a perch carefully so that it had just the right amount of gap between the flowers, allowed me to know exactly where the bird would land.
Placing more limbs with blooms between the perch and the background gave the image some depth and continued the color theme throughout the image.

Here is the set up with the blooms and background.

The final image.

During my last workshop in South Texas in Feb 2010, we noticed a Belted Kingfisher on the ranch pond.
We quickly did a set-up for this beautiful bird. The first thing we did was to set up a long perch in the water. I have found that Kingfishers prefer a perch in the water over one on the bank, because he will have a 360 degree view of the water. The height of the perch was set-up so that we had the distant bank as out background.
The next step was to build a cage to house minnows. This was built out of PVC pipe and fine mesh screening. A swimmers floatation tube was used to keep the rig afloat. This cage was to keep the minnows alive.
We also used a small childrens plastic swimming pool to float on top of the water. This was used on the days we were shooting. We would take some minnows from the deeper mesh cage and put them in the small plastic shallow pond.
We also changed out the perch each day for different looks.

Here’s a couple of images of the set-up.

All of the workshop participants managed to get great images of the Kingfisher. Below are some of those images.

I have a good feeling that this bird will be there when we return for workshops early in 2011. If you are interested in joining me, drop me a line and I’ll add you to the list.

Good shooting,

Alan.

The White-tipped Dove is a speciality bird of the Rio-Grande Valley in Texas. It can only be found in this part of the US.

I have always set myself a goal to get ground feeding birds like Quail, Dove etc up on a stump or rock when I photograph them.

This is a low percentage shot, but if it can be pulled off, the results are worth it.

Getting the bird on a stump or rock will put your background much futher away, rendering a nice smooth out-of-focus backdrop.

An out-of-focus background will be less distracting and allow the bird to really stand out.

After many years of experimanting with this challenge, I figured out that the best way to get the birds up on your elevated set-up is to build a ramp on the back.

You would think that the birds would just hop up on the rock or stump to get to your bait/food, but if you offer them a ramp, they will rather walk up. I guess it takes less energy to walk up than it does to hop. It also allows the bird to go slow and check out what is on top of the rock, rather than just jumping up and taking a chance.

Below is an image of me teaching participants at a workshop. You can see the piece of wood that I used as a ramp. You can also see the rock and the wildflowers that I placed of the front of the rock.

Below is the final result, shot in sweet morning light. All workshop participants got this same image.

For my April 12-15, 2010 workshop, we plan to do many set-ups like this one, especially with the Quail.

I only take four participants on my workshops and I have just one opening for this one.

If you are interested in joining me, you can get more details here.

If you pick up a copy or subscribe to Wildbird magazine, you will find a four page article I did on Woodpecker set-ups for the Jan/Feb 2010 issue.

Only two spots left for my South Texas workshop April 12-15.
This is the only opening I have left for any workshop in the lower 48 states for 2010.
Let me know if you are interested in joining me.

I just returned from scouting new locations for future workshops and boy, did I find a gem.
The owners of this property have been putting out fruit every morning for years, at about 7 am each morning like clockwork, the birds arrive.
There were over 30 Kiskadees flying in to pick up grapes, along with three Altimira Orioles fighting over orange halfs, and at least half a dozen Golden-fronted Woodpeckers.
About a dozen Orange-crowned Warblers would feed on the suet. Mockingbirds would land and grab berries, then fight for positions on my perches.
On one day, there were four Clay-colored Thrushes coming to feed on the grapes, which is a rare bird indeed.

This is my third time to shoot at this location and every time I have witnessed the same insane action!
In the blind I used my wide angle lens to try to capture the scene, but it was hard to stop shooting the action with my 600 MM.
Here is the image I took. You can see 7 Kiskadees (one behind the stump), 3 Altimira Orioles, 3 Golden-fronted Woodpeckers (one behind the log) and a Mockingbird.
For those who are in doubt, let me assure you that this is not photoshopped.

Almost as soon as I put the berry branches out, the Kiskadees and Mockingbirds were feeding on the fruit.

Here the Kiskadees are fighting over perches.

The Golden-fronted Woodpeckers also took a liking to the berries.

This is a set-up with a verticle perch and some added berries.

Waving goodbye!

Northern Mockingbirds are very particular about the berries they want.

Once the berries were gone, I worked on some flight images as the Kiskadees would fly in for the grapes and banana pieces.

It wasn’t long before the birds would land on any stable perch that I put out there.

The stunning Altimira Oriole gave me some regal poses.

Setting up a perch very colse to my blind and adding a small dab of suet in the leaves, enabled the Orange-crowned Warbler to stop and feed.

The highlight of the day, for me, was a visit by not one, but four Clay-colored Thrushes. My heart pounded when one jumped up on my perch and posed.

So many times I wanted to give someone a high five after getting a shot, but I was alone.
If you want to join me in a workshop at this location and share in some high fives, just contact me.

I spent a nice few days on a friends ranch just south of San Antonio, TX. One of the ranch hands who was a hunter had shot a wild boar/hog and allowed me to have it to use to attrach birds of pray.
The first thing I did was to find a location that had a nice distant background and clear horizon, allowing the sunrise to hit the set up. I dragged some limbs from the nearby woods to set up over the hog.
Once I did that I set up my doghouse blind and left it all there for a day.

It did not take long before I had many Crested Caracaras and Black Vultures feeding on the carcass.

With all the commotion going on with the feeding frenzy, it was the sub-adult Caracara that was the dominant one. He would try to fight off all the other birds coming in to feed.

While there were many birds feeding, some of the birds would stage on the perches I had set up.

I also managed to get a few flight shots.

In a couple of months I’m going back again when all the wild flowers are blooming and the Texas Hill Country is in all it’s glory. I’m sure I will be in Hog heaven again.

So now that you are doing set-ups and choosing your own perches, have you given any thought as to what angle you place the perch around your set-up?

Well I have been playing around with this for many years. Here’s what I have settled on doing.

If you place the perch going away from you, the bird will land with his side to you. I call this the field guide pose

This image of a Worm-eating Warbler shows the bird in good position, but I feel that the perch running up through the frame is distracting. I also do not like the perch vegatation extending from the back.
The thing I dislike the most is that unless you are shooting at f16, the near and furthest part of the perch will be out-of-focus.

If we place the perch parallel to the camera plane, the the bird will land facing you or with his back to you.

The perch is now all in focus and no part of the perch is running through the bird. But how can we get the perch to look like this and the bird to look like it does in the image with the perch set away from us?

Well, what I have discovered after many hours doing this is that even though the bird will land with his back to you or facing you full on……

It’s only a matter of seconds before the birds does what I call the “twist”. All small birds move on the perch this way.
If you give them a few seconds, they will either turn back when they want to move along the perch.

Now you have the best of both worlds. The perch is nice and sharp and all in focus. No part of the perch is extending out of the bird and the bird is parallel to the camera plane showing that field guide pose.
So when I set my perches up around my feeders and drip ponds, I set them parallel to the camera and wait for that “twist”.

All images are the copyright of Alan Murphy Photography.

© 2009 Alan Murphy Photography