We hiked through a local park on a cloudy, overcast day with a north wind (again!). The birds in the area flew back and forth, rarely staying visible. Instead, not surprisingly, they preferred the shelter of the foliage. The bugs they foraged probably did too.
After several attempts to take a few photographs, I finally walked down a small, overgrown path surrounded by foliage where I saw a lot of movement. I stood still for several minutes, just watching, and eventually got these three shots of a warbler observing, looking, and stretching out its neck.
I know birders who stand absolutely still and quiet with binoculars in hand and at the ready, for five or ten minutes at a time when they see movement and hope to sight the bird. I admire their patience and focus. That kind of patience is definitely a skill I need to develop.
Usually in my first blog post of a new year I talk about our photography/interpretive naturalist plans for the year. This year we will remain flexible, and hope with vaccines being administered we can go back to leading hikes and conducting photography classes by mid to end of year. In the meantime we continue to work on our personal projects. One of those projects is to start birding more often, and I plan to keep my naturalist journal again. Since our citizen science projects ended a few years ago we find ourselves doing both less and less, and miss it. It is time to work on our personal lists and field journals, and perhaps start entering our data on some of the websites like eBird where the data can be accessed and used by others.
Nichter Photography PLUS 