If you are a nature photographer, the weather is always something to think about. Even on rainy days I like to get the camera out and find some birds who are not scared of a little water. However I don’t like getting wet either – something to do with old age. So I tend to look to the front yard and my friendly silvereyes to get my photographic fix for the day through the window. My Lumix G9 works well in the dull low light that the rain brings. There are no shadows to contend with, so all in all it makes for a fun exercise.
The challenge then becomes one of finding different behaviours and different poses for these much photographed little birds. So I put out some different branches for them to perch on and hang a banana for them to munch on. Baking bananas (bruised and soft) are usually on special at the supermarkets and are a favourite of the silvereyes. If you hang them, the sparrows often find them too hard to land on, so most of the banana goes to the silvereyes. The silvereyes will defend their right to the bananas, giving lots of little aggressive poses for me to capture.
This flock of birds is so predictable now that I often have other photographers visit so they too can sit at my dining room table with a cuppa tea and their cameras, and photograph the birds through the window with me. It is a large full height bay window, so there is room for several of us. Being as it is the dining room, the birds are used to us sitting at the table and so long as we don’t make quick movements, will ignore us and our cameras.
Other times they will stare me in the eye and it feels like they are telling me there is nothing left in the banana skin and would I please replace it. They are very clever little birds when they want to be. Most of these images were taken with ISO 5000. Some noise reduction has been done during post processing but for the most part other than a small crop, that is all. I prefer to get it right in camera if at all possible, so less time at the computer.
