A Bird’s Eye View. Or Not.

A Bird’s Eye View. Or Not.

Birds fly. And, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes, they just sit there.

Some amateur photographers get stuck in an ‘I’m totally the next NatGeo Wildlife Photographer’ mindset forgetting that some of the coolest wildlife shots don't come from pointing their lens up to the sky waiting for the once-was-but-no-longer-is endangered bald eagle to take off from his roost. Sometimes, you should just sit down with your feathered friends and hang out for awhile and see what happens.

This is what I did on a recent trip to the Fishing Pier on Sanibel Island, Florida. While all the other photographers were capturing birds in flight (bif), I sauntered over to a group of Snowy Egrets (Egretta thula-for those especially geeked out on hanging on to Latin names for no apparent reason) and sat down among them on the shoreline.

I was very quiet. I moved slowly. I didn’t lift my camera for a good ten to fifteen minutes. I just sat there, as if I had been invited over for a late-morning iced tea. I watched them scratch and sniff and taunt and tease and flutter and flit. They took off and landed. They walked in and out of the water’s edge no less than a hundred times. I waited. I let them get used to me. And, me used to them.

When the light was right and the orchestra of birds had aligned themselves in front of me, I picked up my camera and took a few shots. Then, I waited. And watched. And waited some more. And when a new configuration caught my eye, I took my shot.

After checking out some ‘just ok’ shots in my viewfinder, I realized that positioning the bright blue sky behind their snowy white feathers would give the photos that added punch they needed. I focused on the bird closest to me to get some nice depth of field on his friends behind him and set my camera down on the sand (don’t freak out), and took a couple more shots. It turns out these were some of my favorites.

In a moment of sheer delight, an enormous Egretta thula (just making sure you’re still paying attention) flew in for a landing right in front of me. I captured a unique bird-coming-in-for-landing angle that I wouldn’t have captured had I not been sitting on the sand.

When shooting birds, just remember -- Sometimes they fly...and sometimes they just sit there.