Amazing bird photography

Posted on December 31, 2020 by Bruce McCammon

I tend to take a lot of photos of birds. As a life-long photographer, I have applied myself to wedding photography, landscape photography, portraiture, and architectural photography. Given this background, I honestly believe that bird photography may be the most challenging and, at times, quite rewarding. Many people think that wedding photography is the most challenging because you don’t get any “do-overs”. Wedding moments are present and then they are gone. But a wedding photographer has the benefit of being able to recon the venue, set up lights as needed, talk to the bride and wedding party to give instructions – all within a reasonably confined space. Bird photographers generally get none of these benefits. Birds fly in unexpectedly, land in the shade or partial sunlight, face away from the camera and fly just as the camera gains focus. Sure, we can set up lights and draw birds to a photo stage with food but true, in-the-field bird photography leans heavily on technical camera mastery, knowledge of the subject(s) being sought, and, frankly, a lot of luck.

Social media opens up our eyes to a global variety of amazing birds. There is no shortage of masterful photographers who show their work to the world on a daily basis. I marvel at the colors and patterns of birds I have never heard of as I admire the clarity and beautiful light the photographer used to give me their photo. I am frequently inspired as I scan through dozens of photos each night and try to reverse engineer how a photo was taken.

Bird photographers tend to be a passionate bunch. As one’s skills with camera technology improve we begin to challenge ourselves to do better – gain better focus, recognize the moment a bird provides a great pose, know that light will only show magnificent feather iridescence for a fleeting second, and that patience is key to success. So is a willingness to repeatedly fail. Behind every great bird photo there are millions of pixels in the digital bin.

As a case study of the passion and patience of a master bird photographer, I’d like to introduce you to Mike Forsberg, a Great Plains photographer with a penchant for birds (https://www.michaelforsberg.com/). I learned about Mike when I was researching American Dippers and looking for needed background information about this amazing bird – America’s only aquatic songbird.

Our fast-water, Cascade streams and rivers are home to many American Dippers. I always wonder what this bird does underwater. If you have watched them dive and surface with a hellgrammite in its beak, you have probably wondered about the “how” of the bird’s submerged chase.

Mike Forsberg was determined to get a photo of an American Dipper underwater. Possessing the requisite skills and equipment allowed Mike to pursue this challenge over time. He teamed up with a local guide on the Poudre River in Colorado and produced an amazing collection of stills and video to show us the remarkable “Trout with Feathers”.

Enjoy his 8:51 second video.

Spanish bird names

Posted on December 28, 2020 by Bruce McCammon

We may hear different versions of the Black-capped Chickadee song if we are listening to one in Alabama or in Washington. Bird songs have regional dialects, just like humans. So it shouldn’t come a big surprise to learn that there are many variations of Spanish names for bird species. One of our oldest languages, Spanish has been adapted over time to suit regional uses and needs.

The challenge of settling on a set of Spanish names for use in Version 11 of the NCWAS Common Birds of North Central Washington bird poster has produced a compilation of names from five reputable sources: the Cornell Lab, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Sibley, Kaufman and, of course, Audubon. Amazingly, there is very little overlap between these sources.

A PDF version of the spreadsheet containing the Spanish names is available in our “Downloadable Resources” section found here.

We sent this table out for comment to a wide variety of people in Latino and scientific communities. Everyone recognized that there is simply not a silver bullet for standardizing the names. Several people pointed out that many Latin American academics and bird guides are using a variety of phone-based apps to identify birds. Of the available apps, Merlin and eBird seem to be the most common sources for Spanish bird names. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is behind these apps. Our initial choice of standard Spanish bird names will, therefore, use the names provided by the Cornell Lab.

We recognize that the Cornell names may not fit perfectly within our local Latino community and we are open to changing the names if local expertise can be found and documented. Until then, we are very happy to provide the table of names as a resource for others who may want to pursue refinement and corrections. Let us know what you think. You can always send us comments through our website.

Common Birds of North Central Washington poster

Posted on December 24, 2020 by Bruce McCammon

The North Central Washington Audubon Society has given away hundreds of our popular poster that features common birds in our four-county area. We are always looking for ways to make this poster more useful for people who are interested in birds – especially kids. We are pleased to announce that Version 11 of the poster will be available soon.

Version 11? Holy Crow! Yes, when we make a substantial revision to the poster we issue a new version number. Version 11 contains some wonderful changes. First, there are two new birds on the poster: the Red-breasted Nuthatch and the American Wigeon. To make room for these two birds, we dropped the Rock Pigeon thinking that everyone is familiar with this non-native species. The poster was also rearranged a bit to fit the new birds into the mix.

Common Birds of North Central Washington, Version 11 — Common Birds of NC Washington V11

The biggest change we made in Version 11 is the addition of Spanish names for each of the bird species. It turns out that settling on a Spanish name is really quite challenging. We collected five different sets of Spanish names from reputable sources: Sibley, Audubon, Cornell Labs, Kenn Kaufman’s Spanish field guide, and a few from local, Latino birders. Unfortunately, there is no strong similarity in the different sets of names. We asked for opinions and options from many local birders and finally decided to standardize the Spanish names using the ones provided by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The Cornell Lab is a well-respected source for bird information. When we learned that many academic birders in Mexico were using a Mexican version of Cornell’s Merlin app to identify birds in Mexico, we made the decision to adopt Cornell as our standard. We expect to hear that there are naming options that make more sense for the local Latino community. We will keep track of suggestions and may incorporate them in a future version of the poster.

While we were adapting the poster to show the Spanish names, we also updated the sizes of the birds based on the lengths provide on the Cornell website www.allaboutbirds.org. We kept the poster size at 11×17 inches since that is easily printed and framed.

We will be distributing a few posters to some of our local bird experts for review and comment. Once we have those comments back and make any needed changes, we will let our supply of Version 10 dwindle down and begin the distribution of Version 11. We hope that you will enjoy the new version of the poster as much as the previous ones. You can always send us comments through our website.