A Little More about Photographing Birds

 Hummingbird on (I think) trumpet flower. Copyright 2020 Philip N. Jenkins.

As I think I made clear in my previous post, I'm not a bird photographer, except incidentally. If I see something interesting, I'll photograph it, but I don't go looking for birds to photograph, as serious bird photographers do.

My brother Phil is one such, and he does exquisite work with birds, as do Dennis Mook and Dave Hileman, both of whom I mentioned in my previous post. 

These guys all photograph birds from the smallest to the largest -- eagles, cranes, herons, etc. Phil has an exceptionally beautiful series of hummingbirds, as well as the eagle I've posted here before. And all three of them have lenses with sufficient range to do the job. It appears that lenses for serious bird photography start at about 600 mm equivalent and go on from there as far as your budget and ability to carry the weight will take you. And even then you may have to do some cropping

A pair of pileated woodpeckers, seen from my kitchen window.

Speaking of cropping, I looked out my kitchen window one morning several years ago and saw a pair of pileated woodpeckers working on a tree about 30 yards away. The longest lens I own is a Fujicron XC 50-250mm, which is a 345mm equivalent when fully extended. That's what you see in the photo above. Interesting, but not close enough.

So what to do? I cropped. 

Pileated woodpeckers. Cropped version.

Even severely cropped, the photo is sharp and would easily make a reasonably good 12x16-inch print.

Barn swallows under our deck.

 Sometimes, though, you can get bird pictures with very little effort. For quite a few years, barn swallows raised broods of fledglings under our rear deck. All I had to do was step out the basement door and snap photos of these disgruntled young fellows.

Both the woodpecker and barn swallow photos were made with a Fuji X-T20.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

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Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins except as noted.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    photographic techniques     bird photography     Fuji X-T20 digital camera      Fujicron XC 50-230mm lens     digital photography     birds    woodpeckers