Post # 79 - My desire to photograph every bird, Rock Wren included!

One of the things on which I pride my photography is my desire to shoot every species regardless of how magnificent or ordinary it appears. I imagine that tendency stems from my birding background, where I have over the years probably spent more time sorting out the identification of small brown birds than I have anything else. A species is a species, after all, and each has it own evolutionary history, behavioral trivia, and identifiable field marks. Beyond a challenging and rewarding endeavor unto itself, I have found that photography, and particularly photography of those usually less magnificent species that are more difficult to identify, has actually made me a better birder. Its tough not to learn the birds better when one spends as much time as I do staring at them on my computer screen!

Anyway, I bring this up as I was last weekend doing some general LA County Birding at the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area when I heard a Rock Wren calling behind me. I took a few steps towards the source only to see a small bird come flying directly at me. The curious bird lit on a rocky slope and began actively foraging just 20 feet from me. He was quite approachable, and, with nice light even in the later morning, proved to be a very nice photographic subject. I had photographed this species well only once before (in Colorado in 2014), so I seized on the opportunity to follow the bird around for the better part of 15 minutes. It was really a lot of fun, and I am very happy with a few of the shots that I captured. Though not a particularly flashy bird, he is perfectly at home in rocky habitats that discourage many other species. I particularly like the close-up shot as it affords a perspective on this species that isn't often appreciated.

For these shots I really went to great lengths to keep distracting background elements out of the frames. Though sometimes I like to have a bit of habitat context, here I wanted all the focus to be on the bird. My hope is that such clean shots of this Rock Wren will forever etch the species into your birdbrain the way they did into mine.

Rock Wren - Salpinctes obsoletus

Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO II + 1.4x III on EOS 7D2

1/3200 at f/5.6, ISO 400

Rock Wren - Salpinctes obsoletus

Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO II + 1.4x III on EOS 7D2

1/3200 at f/5.6, ISO 400

Oh, as a last aside. I actually put together a gallery-collection of my favorite headshots on my website. I know some folks really enjoyed my headshots from a few posts back, so I decided to collect more of them in an organized form on my photography website. For those who are interested, you can find that gallery here.

Til next time!