Somewhere in the summer of 2002 I lost interest in photographing birds. After a spring project shooting red winged blackbirds, I shifted my attention to other subjects - deeper into macros and close-ups, and with some initial forays into landscapes.

Ironically, questing after dragonflies lead me to wonderful birding locations, and I found several areas that were thick with warblers, song sparrows, orioles, and other wonderful birds. They were good company, and most seemed to be gone before summer had even started. The yellow warblers in particular were intriguing, and so I made a mental note to come back and try to capture the images of these delightful little birds when they returned the next summer.

I have a pretty decent birding rig, but certainly not the best. I use a 400mm f2.8 EDIF lens, usually with a 1.4x, 1.7x, or 2x teleconverter. The teleconverters are 'matched' to the lens, and the optical performance is excellent.

The long and the short of it - I need to get closer to these little birds than someone with more advanced gear. In fact, I need to get within about 15 feet of these little birds to get a frame filling shot - and if they are more than 20 feet off, forget it.

The solution seemed obvious - I'd use a blind. Hidden away behind camo mesh fabric, getting close would be no problem. All I had to do was pick the right spot, set up the blind, and wait.

I surveyed the scrubby waste areas that housed the warblers, and quickly identified several nesting sites. In the tradition of old-time bird photographers, I decided to set up a blind near some of these sites. So after my surveying trip, I swung by Gander Mountain and picked up some camo material, and devised a makeshift blind. The next morning, I headed out to the spot I had picked, set up, and waited for the birds...

I quickly learned some interesting things.

First off, I understood why it is called a "blind". Namely - you cannot see a damn thing when you are sitting in one. Oh, you can see outside the opening that the lens points out of, but unless you create other openings (and somewhat compromise the whole idea of being hidden) you can't see to the left or right. And even if you could see there, you really can't move the camera and tripod around to get at the stuff you see.

Secondly, sitting in a blind is pretty boring. That thought came to be about 10 seconds after I first sat down in it, and stayed with me for the duration of my experiment. The other denizens of the field knew that the blind was out of place, so they took off. After all, they have hundreds of acres to roam in and plenty of backdoors to their nesting sites.

So, after a couple of tries with the blind, I gave up on that approach, and sat down to come up with something new.

Yogi Berra once said "If you don't think too good, it's best not to think too much." Sound advice. But now I had a problem on my hands, and no recourse but to fire up the gray matter and think this thing through...

First stop - Donald Stokes Guide To Bird Behavior. So - just what were my little warbler friends doing with their lives?

It was an interesting read, and with each paragraph the bells kept going off in my head. Yellow Warblers set up small territories around their nest sites. The females tend the nests, the males forage for food and defend the perimeter of the territory from other males.

The solution seemed obvious. I knew where a lot of warbler nests were, and I had seen the males on singing perches defending their territories. Since testosterone pumped males will invariably engage in high risk behavior, I decided to setup up the border areas between the nesting pairs' territories. There I could get shots of the males singing to mark their territories, and maybe even get close to some males engaging in territorial skirmishes.

This plan worked exactly as intended. The males often seemed oblivious to me, they engaged in combat right before my nose, and sang their hearts out in trees right next to where I stood. I really managed to get close to the birds - two combating males actually tussled right in front of my nose (and behind my camera!)

Over the course of the second and third weeks of shooting I tried to refine and improve upon this strategy. I identified more nests, determined the prime singing posts used by the males, and found the areas where multiple territories overlapped. I saw lots of interesting things - particularly in the tussles and fights between males - but had no good opportunities for photographs. While I got close, I only got close to moving birds.  I'd love to get a shot of two or three males sparring in midair - but that is all but impossible.

It was a good plan, but not for photographing the birds. In those border areas the males were either 30 to 50 feet up the trees, singing their songs, or vigorously going at it with each other. At this point I had put in 7 or 8 days of shooting, and was thinking about giving up on this project.

When all else fails, do an internet search. So I sat down with Google.com, entered "photographing warblers" and started to look through the results. That's when I stumbled into Arthur Morris's article on photographing warblers. I had read Morris's Birds as Art, an excellent guide to the art and science of photographing birds, and so I was interested in seeing what he had to say about photographing warblers.

What he said, among other things, was that photographing these little birds took a lot of time and patience. After reading his article I realized that, at best, I was just getting started.  I was far from the point where I should be throwing in the towel. So I set out with renewed determination.

And so I started out afresh, and marked my new determination with a colossal blunder and a bit of serendipity.

The results were worth it. While wandering about I encountered many interesting warbler scenes, but also some interesting scenes with song sparrows, cat birds, and orchard orioles. And by the end of week four, I had finally gotten a decent shot of a female yellow warbler.

Thoughts wander when you spend a few hours standing in a field. In my case, I found myself thinking of the birds and the perils they endure, the loss of their environment, St. Francis, and ultimately a little scrap of quantum theory.

That little scrap of quantum theory states that by merely observing a situation, the situation is altered. It's pretty heady stuff and frankly, beyond my understanding, but it occurred to me as I looked around the fields I had been visiting these last few weeks.

.Week 6: Closer Yet

A week passed before I could get back to the field again. A brief heat wave had just broken, and I hiked into the field under light overcast skies. A coyote stepped out of the brush and totted along the path several feet ahead of me, only to meld back into the woods after a short distance.

I returned to the spot were I had been photographing a male warbler in the preceding week. To my delight he  appeared within a few minutes. He was more relaxed than ever before, and allowed me to get several shots over the period of a few hours. I finally packed it up as the sky darkened and rain started falling. 

On the way home I saw a small yellow spot on the highway pavement - a yellow warbler, killed by a passing car. A poignant reminder of the many perils this little birds face as they make their way through the world.

Final Thoughts