WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2025   |   SUBSCRIBE    ARCHIVES   

BACKYARD BIRDING
 
Suet is a staple bird food year-round, but it becomes particularly important for birds that spend winter months in colder latitudes where they need high-calorie foods. Suet is so easy to provide, its especially economical – and suet is so important for birds seeking high-energy food. Suet is the first standard food we suggest for any feeding station. Even if you don’t want a full feeding station, we encourage people to add a suet feeder to a location where they can watch the attraction it has for birds during winter, and year-round.
BIRDING NEWS 1
 
They are bearers of universal mysteries, holders of ancient wisdom, seekers of the wildest animals – they are birders. Focused, intense, devoted; they speak in reverent tones and hushed whispers and can walk with surprising silence across a bed of leaves. They wield binoculars with nonchalance and speak in a code-like vocabulary that birders use among themselves – species, plumage, nape, talons, pishing, magnification, wing bars, big days, big sits, and big years. They have lists in notebooks or online lists of birds they see and hear – they are birders.
BIRDING NEWS 2
 
A new study reveals that “5 Great Forests” in Central America are lifelines for many of North America’s migratory birds. Every spring, the familiar songs of Wood Thrushes and a variety of warblers return to the woods, parks, and backyards of eastern North America. But their migrations begin far to the south in the lush, remote tropical forests of Central America that sustain songbirds and others during most of the year. The new research reveals that the 5 Great Forests of Central America – stretching from southern Mexico to southern Panama – are indispensable lifelines for dozens of migratory bird species that link the Americas.
EDITOR AFIELD
 
Pyrrhuloxia? Pyrrhuloxia in the center of North Dakota? Pyrrhuloxia!! Two hours away! The first Pyrrhuloxia, a cardinal-like non-migratory desert bird that normally ranges from central Mexico to central Arizona to central Texas – and now, since December 1, rural North Dakota! Even upon arriving at the feeding station and seeing the long-tailed cardinal-sized bird flying to a tree branch before me, it was grossly out of place, especially with snow covering evergreen boughs surrounding the feeders, and turning the ground white as far as I could see.
GEAR
 
Every moment you spend birding deserves the advantage of extraordinary binocular performance, driving Nikon engineers to model the optical system of the Monarch HG Binoculars around its ED (Extra-low Dispersion) glass and high-quality multilayer coating that’s applied to all lenses and prisms for brighter, higher resolution views. The Nikon Monarch HG Binoculars were built from the ground up to achieve class-ruling optical performance, exceptional handling, and unrivaled ruggedness, which means you will truly enjoy using these binoculars while birding!
PRODUCTS 1
 
Birds in Winter: Surviving the Most Challenging Season, is the first book devoted to the ecology and behavior of birds during the most challenging season of the year – winter. Birds remaining in regions with cold weather must cope with much shorter daylight periods to find food and shelter even as they need to avoid predators and stay warm through the long nights. At the same time, migrants to the tropics must fit into very different ecosystems and communities of resident birds. In fact, during winter some birds are already pairing up for the following nesting season.
PRODUCTS 2
 
Take advantage of the big markdown sales on women’s and men’s clothing at Eddie Bauer, where quality and style have always been emphasized in its products. Shop among an abundance of clothing including eye-catching sweaters, fleece, flannel, vests, parkas, pants, boots, and more. Are you ready for some holiday shopping to enhance birding adventures or to upscale your everyday wear? Shop for yourself and for others on your gift list among the new arrivals, sales items, and quality clearance clothing at Eddie Bauer.
RARE BIRDS
 
With an impressive 18 Record Birds reported, we begin with 2 Third North American Records found on Adak Island in the Aleutians of Alaska – an Asian Rosy Finch and a Eurasian Sparrowhawk! There were also 7 First Records, including a First State Record Pyrrhuloxia in North Dakota, a First Provincial Record Common Shelduck in Nova Scotia, a Common Cuckoo in New Hampshire, a Blue Rock Thrush in Hawaii, a Cooper’s Hawk in Newfoundland, a Limpkin in Massachusetts, and a First State Record Cassin’s Kingbird in Connecticut – and there are many more!
 

BIRD PHOTOGRAPHY

Winter has really set in the past 2 weeks, but especially during the last week with diving winter temperatures, and a recent weather report predicted that in the following 9 days it would snow during 8 of them. Arriving very bluntly, winter had me all but snowbound Sunday afternoon, but I was compelled to man my camera as a flurry of action at my feeding station began. As usual, the Blue Jays attracted the most attention and I began photographing a number of repeat visits to my platform feeder for shelled peanuts and peanut pieces. Fairly early into what turned out to be a bona fide photo session, 3 jays landed within seconds of one another, and that’s when the action ensued.

An excellent example of why we always need to be alert for the next opportunity to take action photos, the arrival of second and third Blue Jays at the smallish platform feeder provided the chance to take a quick series action photos (330mm zoom lens, f-6 aperture, 1/640 shutter speed, 800 ISO).

The arrival of the third Blue Jay changed the mood from edgy to antagonistic, as one of the original jays took offense as the new guy tried to gain access to the platform, jabbing with its sharp beak and flailing its wings – the kind of action we always want to be alert for and try to anticipate. The resulting pair of photos turned out to be the basis for me to make this article worthy of developing and publishing, supported with some other representative photos from the photo session. Jays are characters, and you can appreciate their intelligence often when you observe them, and even more so when you photograph them.

Every action sequence has a beginning, peak, and end – and this was the peak of action, stopped in motion by a relatively fast shutter speed, the fastest possible under the subdued natural light (330mm zoom lens, f-6 aperture, 1/1250 shutter speed, 800 ISO).

As it turned out, the photo opportunities were best during a break between snowfall periods, and even without sunshine, it was obvious that overcast conditions during midday sometimes creates more uniform colors than the broken sunlight and shadows that can result at my feeding station. The uniform white background color provided by the snowy surroundings helped to emphasize the birds from the background, and overall the resulting photographs were quite pleasing – at least the ones that the light meter cooperated on.

A narrow aperture of f-6 was used for all these photos on an overcast day when keeping the fastest shutter speed possible was important, and usually the f-6 was adequate, especially for single-bird portraits (500mm zoom lens, f-6 aperture, 1/1000 shutter speed, 800 ISO).

Too often I’ve found that my camera’s light meter has not been consistent when sunlight is a missing ingredient. The result is that the photos show every possible level of lighting, varying from slightly too light to varying degrees of darker shades toward almost silhouette dark. I’m baffled as to why this is the case, but it underlines the importance of photographing when the sunlight is right, with the sun positioned as directly behind you as possible. But while enjoying the chance to take a lot of photographs of the Blue Jays as they visited the platform feeder and perched adjacent to the feeder, I had a variety of photos to choose from to share with you.

Photographing at a feeder, like this simple platform feeder, provides occasional photo opportunities to take photos of all the species that stop by (300mm zoom lens, f-6 aperture, 1/500 shutter speed, 800 ISO).

Using my zoom lens, it was possible to zoom in and out, depending on the birds before me, taking close-focus portraits at times. The zooming options made it all the more interesting in the midst of the Blue Jay action. If you aren’t using a zoom lens, you can always create the same effect as zooming closer for a portrait simply by cropping a sharp photo. Of course, the real reason for any success photographing the Blue Jays was the point of interest in collecting food at my feeding station. The lesson there is to never underestimate the potential of taking photos of the birds that visit your feeders and birdbath; they can provide an action-packed photo session on occasion, or a even documentary photo of a rare or interesting bird.

Jays can really show their character, and they often provide examples of how waiting for just the right moment to snap a photo can create a fun portrait that will get some kind of reaction from any viewer (500mm zoom lens, f-6 aperture, 1/800 shutter speed, 800 ISO).

It was great fun to take the Blue Jay photos, to have a flurry of activity at and around my feeding station, and sometimes that’s what bird photography is all about – to have fun, take a variety of photographs while studying the birds’ behaviors. In essence, I was taking an exciting break in my work schedule instead of a relaxing one. Realistically, an exciting break gets you fired up to get back to your tasks at hand with a little faster heart rate, a bit of excitement in your step, and a smile on your face to pass on to others. The photos are rewarding, and an exciting part of the experience, but how can you beat a little extra happy-excitement in the midst of a Sunday afternoon? Bird photography can do that. Good luck wherever you are, and whatever weather conditions you are experiencing in your area.

Article and Photographs by Paul Konrad

Share your bird photos and birding experiences at editorstbw2@gmail.com
 
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