Getting Started: Photographing Juncos

Given this is my first blog, where does one start? Normally, it is feasible to start at the beginning, but how would I ever catch up? Perhaps it's best to start with the present. That said, I suppose a bit of introduction would be in order.

My name is Doug. I'm an outdoor enthusiast who made rational choices in life. By "rational" I mean I always knew I would need a sound job, and that jobs in the out-of-doors doing things I loved were hard to find, i.e., compromises were made. Now with a Ph.D. in chemistry (which I used for a few years before making another turn into management) I found a little nitch in life that could pay the bills and allow me some flexibility to pursue my greater desires in my free time. Too bad nobody told me that "free time" would be precious little to none. So now it's a race to retirement -- the one that gets there with sanity, bank accounts, and health in tact wins!

Regardless of my choices, there have been those few passions that have made the journey with me through life. Photography and birding are two of those "true to the core" passions. Today, I share the intersection of those with any who feel compelled to read along.

Today was a wonderful lull before the coming storm. The snow just seems to keep coming to the Jemez Mountains of Northern New Mexico this year. No matter, because a visit to the Randal Davey Audubon Center in Santa Fe was in order -- I'll save the back-log of work for tomorrow when the snow flakes are expected to return. For now, it is sunny and glorious outside, despite the couple feet of icy and melting snow still covering the yard of my mountain-side home.

The sun was shining and the birds were active at the Center's many feeders today, but my patiences was just not up to par. No matter, I managed a few photos of some dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis).
This photo is one of the gray-headed race (sexes indistinguishable). Note the dark eye region, and the overall gray body color with a rusty-brown back.

The challenges with photographing these gregarious and vocal little guys are their constant shy hopping about the underbrush coupled with the difficulty of getting separation of the eye from the dark feathers. To solve the problem comes Canon high-speed E-TTL flash. These photos were captured using the Canon EOS 5D Mark II with the 180mm Macro f/3.5 L and the 580EXII Speedlight shooting in aperture priority mode at shutter speeds around 1/500 to 1/1000 second!

The beauty of high-speed synch E-TTL is the ability to dial down the background a stop or two and freeze motion without a lot of thought. Here, I drop the blue sky about a stop by adding light from the flash. Note the catch-light the flash puts in the eye. Note the white outer tail feathers.

Here's the male of the Oregon Race of the species, distinguishable by the dark head contrasting the rest of the body and the pale brown flanks. This species has so much variation with 15 described races; six forms are easily recognizable in the field.

Among the other birds I viewed today were house finches, american goldfinches, spotted towhees, canyon towhees, common ravens, western scrub-jays, evening grossbeaks, red-naped sap-suckers, red-breasted nuthatches, white-breasted nuthatches, pine siskins, black-billed magpies, Townsend's solitaires, and bushtits.

If you get to Santa Fe, be sure to check out the Randal Davey Center. It's free, and during the summer the hummingbirds swarm the many feeders just as the many other birds visit the seed feeders year-round.