The "Photo-feeder" for Backyard Bird Photographyby Fred Hurteau
About the Author
The dedicated amateur ornithologist has but one vice........ bird watching However, the backyard bird watcher who's been bitten by the old shutter-bug has two vices. He is not only blessed with a joyous appreciation of his cheerful feathered friends, but is also cursed by an insatiable desire to take professional looking photographs of those same feathered friends. And that can be frustrating.
This article assumes you have an SLR camera with at least a 300mm or longer telephoto, or a consumer digital camera with at least a 6x to 10x optical zoom lens. If not, that's certainly the first thing you'll need. Once you have a camera that will "reach" the birds and make them large enough in the frame to make this all worthwhile, you need to find a way to get close enough. If you can get within 10-15 feet of those skittish songbirds for good close-ups, you're either invisible, or incredibly lucky. Or, you can do what I do, and use a "photo-feeder" set up to attract them, and allow you to take natural-looking photos without the birds hanging off a plastic bird feeder.
You will need to situate a home-made bird feeder 10 feet or so from the house or garage just outside a window. My first photo-feeder was made from a two foot long section of a dead tree limb, shallowly hollowed out like a dugout canoe, to make a feeder with a natural look to it (see drawing - above left). My technique now is to use a 3/4 inch wood bit and drill a row of holes closely spaced, and then chisel out the area between them for a seed "trough". Several of these along the limb will suffice nicely. If it's angled correctly in relation to the camera height, you won't be able to see the dugout area, which you may note is visible in the photo at the top of the page from the original setup. Learn from my mistake. I no longer have this problem, as seen in the Blue Jay photo at right.
I nailed the dugout limb atop a post about the height of the window sill (test your height with your camera set up to get the right angle and avoid showing the dugout area). A few branches from a sapling, or a handy small dead limb blown down in a storm, can be nailed to the post so they project above and behind the feeder. This gives the birds something to perch on, and adds the natural look you want in your pictures. If you place new branches each time you set up for pictures, you could let the leaves remain. They should stay green for a while depending on the weather. This sort of feeder costs nothing, and works very well for photography. The graphic above of an exterior view gives an idea how this feeder looks.
Next, cover the bottom half of a "pull-up" style window on the OUTSIDE (so you can open and close the window from the inside) with a piece of cardboard, poster board, foam core board, 1/8 inch plywood or other stiff sturdy covering. Make a large horizontally elliptical hole in the covering for the camera to shoot through. An ellipse is best for two reasons. First, a round hole won't allow you to pan horizontally with the camera, and second, if the opening has sharp corners (a rectangle) it could tear more easily if it is made from cardboard or poster board instead of plywood or other very strong material. I used a heavy white poster board and it worked fine. Be sure you do NOT use cheap COLORED school poster board. The dye in it is not waterproof and the slightest dampness might cause the dye to run and stain your house paint or windowsill.
You've surely figured out by now this covering is to hide you from the birds. But now you need to make a covering for the camera. The graphic below shows how to make a shield from poster board or cardboard to go over the lens or lens hood, so you can pan without the birds detecting movement through the opening. The size of the shield will depend on the width and height of the opening. It should be wide enough so that when you pan all the way left or right, the shield still covers the opening on either side.
Mark a circle on the shield the same diameter as your lens or lens hood (telephoto lenses usually have a long lens hood ideal for placing the shield on). Now cut "pie slices" from the center of the circle to the edge. Where the slices fold the cuts should be no farther apart than 3/8 inch to 1/2 inch so it will fit more snugly on the lens hood. Once cut, push in on the center of the slices so they all spread out and open the hole. You should be able to shove the lens hood into the hole so it is a snug fit. If it is too tight, slit the pie slices a bit more to enlarge the opening until the lens hood fits and is snug. If you overdo it slightly, you can put a piece of masking tape around the "slices" where they fold back over the lens hood. This will make them fit snugly without getting "stick-um" from the tape onto your camera. I sprayed my shield with flat black paint to match the lens hood color, but that is probably not really necessary.
Now put everything together, and set up your camera on the tripod. If you find that your camera is too far from the window because the tripod legs are in the way, try this. Put two legs next to the wall, and make those legs shorter and more vertical than the back leg, which will have to be longer and more angled to make the tripod center post close to vertical. This will surely make the tripod unsteady and "front heavy", particularly with the weight of a telephoto lens. You can hang a heavy weight (sack of potatoes, plastic grocery bag of books, etc.) from the protruding leg to counterbalance the camera. That will allow you to get the camera closer to the window.
Another option would be to use a beanbag right on the window ledge instead of a tripod to steady your camera. The bottom of this page shows a beanbag I made from the instructions provided on this web site. It should work well for a small consumer zoom digital camera as well as an SLR.
If you've chosen an out-of-the-way place in the house (I was set up in the kitchen pantry which had a window) you can leave things setup all the time so it is ready at a moments notice when the birds show up to feed. You can even cut a separate hole in the window cover to allow your flash to be used, particularly if it is not a "hot shoe only" type which can be detached from your camera and mounted in the hole.
When deciding what window to use, take into consideration what the background will look like. Being focused so close with a telephoto lens will make the background (area behind the feeder) very fuzzy, so details are not important. However, two things are important. First, if the background is extremely dark or light (dark color building or white building or bright sky), you will have to be careful about your exposure meter readings. Also, if you're pointed east or west, you might have to deal with the sun for morning or evening shots, and may have to keep your activity limited to other times of the day when the light is not directly in your eyes (backlighting).
This article is really just something to give you an idea of what you can do. Think about how something similar to this might work for you, and use your own creative instinct to change it to meet your own needs. I hope this information will help you get some great photos and bring you satisfaction with your bird photography.