One of my favorite local passerines is the chestnut-backed chickadee. It is common enough to be seen semi-regularly, but just rare enough for those sightings to be special. Here is a photo I took last November, as the leaves were turning color on the trees. I love how the chickadee’s colors compliment the fall colors of nature.
Another reason that I enjoy chickadee sightings is that I always think of them as “bonus” birds. I never set out to specifically find one of these guys (if I did so, I’d probably be searching for days). Usually I’ll go looking for a different target species (be it a shorebird rarity, newly hatched chicks, etc) and only after I successfully (or unsuccessfully) photograph my target do I look around to see who else is present. And that’s when a chickadee might show up.
The biggest challenges in photographing birds like this are their size and speed. They are a relatively small bird. When working with a large lens (as I normally do for birds), that means working at or less than the lens’s minimum focusing distance. That also means that finding your subject at that magnification is like finding a needle in a haystack! And the speed? The only time this bird sits still is when it stops to sing. Otherwise it is flitting from branch to branch – very hard to track with a long lens. Here patience and practice (and some times a little luck) pay off.
Recently I found this chestnut-backed chickadee foraging in and around a large ornamental bush growing along a walking path. These chickadees seem to mostly travel alone, and are difficult to photograph because they are small and very fast. Usually they’ll perch on a twig just long enough for me to find it in my viewfinder before it zips off to another location, leaving me with yet another picture of an empty twig.
A chestnut-backed chickadee plucks a small dead leaf from its branch in order to create a better place to perch
True to form, this little guy was jumping from one spot to another, leaving me with nothing but my normal frustration. Suddenly, he lighted on a narrow branch right in front of me. After surveying his spot for a few seconds, he plucked a small dead leaf in order to clear a spot, and launched into a beautiful song. He seemed occupied in his song, and completely unconcerned with my presence, allowing my to click away.
A chestnut-backed chickadee perches on a thin bush stem
After about 30 seconds of singing and a few brief poses on his perch, he was off again. This time he did not hang around, but took off into the air and out of sight.
I’ve been a bit out of pocket lately, between being sick and being very busy with things other than photography. To make matters worse, one of my camera bodies decided to stop working, so it has been away at the Canon repair facility, right in the middle of prime bird season! However, even though I couldn’t be out shooting, I was able to catch up a little on photo processing.
A dark-eyed junco perches on a short bush, surveying the surrounding area
Late last year I came across a small flock of dark-eyed juncos. Being ground feeders, most were darting through the grass at the edge of a field. Usually I try to get as low to the ground as possible when photographing a bird on the ground, but because this bird was so small, the height of the grass many times obscured the bird. I found that working about 2 feet off the ground gave me a better angle to the juncos, keeping grass out of the foreground.
A dark-eyed junco stands at attention as he searches the ground for food
Dark-eyed juncos are fairly common, but maybe not as easily noticed by the non-birder as other common species. They are typically seen foraging on the ground, so are not in your face as much as a house sparrow or house finch might be.
