It's been a great year for winter finches in many parts of Canada, including the southern half of Ontario where I live. Reports of Evening Grosbeaks, Pine Grosbeaks, Bohemian Waxwings, White-winged Crossbills, Red Crossbills, and Common and Hoary Redpolls are as common as Mallards at the local park pond. There's also been a significant increase in the number of Red-breasted Nuthatches over last winter. So far, I've managed to see one flock of EVGR fly overhead, one female Pine Grosbeak closeup and a small flock overhead, a few flocks of White-winged Crossbills, lots of Red-breasted Nuthatches, and many, many Common Redpolls plus a few Hoary Redpolls. I'm continuing to hold out hope for close views of Evening Grosbeaks and Bohemian Waxwings.
I can't think of a better winter for this invasion from the north. Seeing splashes of colour and high-energy birds feeding has been a treat to distract many of us from the darker, more depressing parts of life these days.
On January 10, I had awesome photography experiences with a flock of 200+ Common Redpolls (CORE). The flock seemed to grow to 300+ by the time I saw them again two weeks later. This flock had been reported for a week or so before I saw them and some very well respected birders had identified a couple of Hoary Redpolls in the flock, so I went to have a look.
As I walked the pathway beside a fallow field, I could see the flock moving around along the tops of the tall weeds. "Awesome," I thought as I watched the flock and noticed that the sun was in the perfect spot for photos. In the past weeks, I'd been trying mainly for close shots of individuals, but the conditions today looked good for flock shots. I enjoy photos of individual Redpolls, especially close shots showing the feather patterns, but most of the time I see CORE, they're in fast-moving flocks as they fly from feeding spot to feeding spot. I wanted to try to photograph this behaviour if I could.
My attempts to photograph the flying flock were pretty close to disastrous. My camera was unable to focus on the very quickly moving swarm of birds that sometimes came with a few feet of my head. I was shooting with my 600mm + 1.4x, so I wonder if I would have had better luck with less lens, such as the 100-400mm. I managed one or two photos that are acceptable, but I wasn't getting what I wanted.
Eventually, the flock began to land in the tops of weeds close enough to the path to get good photos. The challenge now was how to get groups of birds in focus without obstructions as they fed on the seeds. I had to work quickly since they would frequently all fly off. Thankfully, they often came back after a few circles around parts of the field.
My technique here was pretty simple and straight-forward: find a group of birds feeding together, focus on unobstructed birds in the front of the group, start shooting and hope for the best. I made sure my shutter speed was fast to freeze movement. Sometimes I adjusted the aperture for greater depth of field, but the birds were far enough away that depth of field wasn't a big issue. I alternated between f/8 and f/5.6. Interestingly, the narrower depth of field at f/5.6 produced some of the best shots creating nice blur (bokeh) in the background where other members of the flock were feeding.
I ended up with a lot of useless photos that quickly went into the dustbin (not unusual), but a few of them surprised me. Here are some of my favourites:
Feeding Flock
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Common Redpolls Feeding: Finding unobstructed views of a group was a challenge! |
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Common Redpolls Feeding: One of my favourites showing behaviour - and they're all in focus! |
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Common Redpolls Feeding |
Flock in Flight
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Common Redpolls: One of only a few flight shots of the flock in in flight |
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Common Redpolls: Pure luck to be shooting rapid-fire when they suddenly flew |
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Common Redpolls: Pure luck to be shooting rapid-fire when they suddenly flew |
Singles
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Common Redpolls are quite photogenic when down low in a field |
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Common Redpoll Balancing |
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Common Redpoll |
Conclusion
It has certainly been a great winter for Common Redpolls in southern Ontario. I wonder when we'll have another winter as good as this one has been!
Until next time ...