Photographing Wild Birds
There are all sorts of cameras on the market now, in shapes and sizes for everyone. You can get a point-and-shoot for $10, or a high end digital camera with zoom for around $1000. On every budget, and at every quality range, it is possible to get good photos of your feathered friends!
This chickadee was taken from around 15 feet through a side window, with the Sony Mavica digital camera. The camera has a great zoom, but it was hardly necessary for this shot.
The trick is to set up a reliable food source near somewhere where you can sit comfortable for quite a while. Fill up the food source, settle yourself in, and wait. If the birds are comfortable feeding at your station, they can sit there for quite a while, giving you ample opportunity to snap your photos.
However, even with the best camera you won't get great shots if the birds are zipping in and out at the speed of light! You need to have a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere for them, and a comfy place for you to wait them out while they settle themselves in to have some lunch.
I HIGHLY highly recommend getting a good zoom on your camera. My current camera has a 10x zoom. That way even if you're far away from the bird, you still get a nice photo. A high resolution helps too, because you can crop close around your bird's image and get a lot of detail. Here is a bird photo I took recently in Cancun, where the bird was a fair ways off.
If you do have the money, a digital camera is great because you can go through a ton of photos, getting immediate feedback if each one was worth keeping. If not, you simply delete it from the list and keep going. Instead of taking a roll of film and waiting to see which were worth it, paying for them all anyway, you now can take as many pictures as you want, knowing that at least some portion will be fantastic!
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