John & Maria's Photography Pages

Photographing birds with the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro - Part 1

I am not a bird photographer.  To be honest I've never been that interested in them and I've never had the budget to afford the long, fast telephoto lenses required to do the job properly.  But, like any wildlife / nature photographer I'll take the opportunity to get a shot should chance permit.

Stover Park, near Newton Abbot in Devon, is a 114 acre nature reserve centred around a large lake that attracts large numbers of migratory birds in winter,  Because there is a flat road running round the lake it's ideal for Maria's mobility scooter and we can enjoy a day out together.

Now the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8, even with the 1.4x teleconverter fitted, is not, by birding standards, a long lens.  420mm ff equivelent, though great for picking out flower details at the back of borders or capturing butterflies feeding without spooking them, is not really long enough for small, shy birds in distant treetops.

But it's just long enough and fast enough for waterfowl aclimated to human presence.  Water fowl such as this flock of coots...

...or a red billed moorhen.

Of course, bigger birds are even easier, as exemplified by this mute swan juvenile enjoying a wing stretch.

But all too often the bird is just a dot in the viewfinder and even the sharpness of the lens isn't enough to produce useable images.

But there are circumstances when even shy birds will tolerate human closeness.  During my regular days at The Garden House I'm often followed around by one of the resident robins.  They're quite happy to get close and even pose.

Of course, they're looking for food, hoping the human will turn up a tasty morsel at ground level. It's what gardeners do, after all.  Mind you, the need to search for food can certainly overcome caution, as with this song thrush hunting for snails amidst a hard early winter freeze.

Hopefully it found something worthwhile.

Regular feeding, as anyone who's put up feeders or bird tables knows, will always attract birds and some of my better shots have been taken on the feeders in my own back garden.  But that's the subject for my next post...