Birding with a Camera

You don't need to be a photographer to have fun taking pictures.

Apr 12, 2025

(Listen to the radio version here.)

When I was writing the National Geographic Pocket Guide: Birds of North America, my co-author Jonathan Alderfer (who was co-author/photo editor/project manager for just about all the National Geographic books about birds for decades) told me he wanted to use one of my photos in the book so I could legitimately call myself a “National Geographic photographer.”

That seemed hilarious because I don’t consider myself a photographer—I’m a birder with a camera. The photo I chose was taken with a point-and-shoot camera (a Canon PowerShot S2 IS) on May 3, 2006, while I was leading a warbler walk at Park Point. A couple dozen people showed up, surprising since the temperature started in the teens and barely climbed to 20º. I was shivering when we came upon a cold little Yellow-rumped Warbler, all fluffed out with an expression like a Jane Austen character saying “I am most seriously displeased.”

Taking the photo—really, just a snapshot—was hardly an achievement—it’s simply a souvenir of a lovely experience. But I confess that once I did mention something about National Geographic publishing one of my photos. I was birding alone when a guy lugging two Nikons with long lenses saw my long lens and started showing off photos on his cameras and listing awards he’d won. When he handed me a business card and patronizingly invited me to contact him if I ever needed advice, well… wouldn’t you have dropped the name “National Geographic” at that point?

For 25 years, I birded the traditional way, with binoculars and a spotting scope. But no one defined me by my tools—everyone understands that those optics simply help us get a better view. Now I’ve simply substituted a camera for the scope. (I’d named my scope Sacajawea.1 She recently retired to Cuba where I hope she’s enjoying lots of lovely birds.)

My current camera has a 500-mm lens, comparable to 10x binoculars, so it provides nowhere near the magnification my spotting scope did. But the camera’s 48-megapixel sensor allows me to zoom in on images when I get home to see details I could never have seen in the field. Even at close range, I can’t take in, much less savor, every detail of a bird in the moment the way I can when I study my photos.

A photo allows us to appreciate details hard to take in during the brief moment an active little bird is in sight.

My being in the habit of photographing so many of the birds I come across came in handy just today. I took a walk at Waabizheshikana, or what we used to call the Western Waterfront Trail. I got to see plenty of early migrants—two pairs of Trumpeter Swans; Canada Geese getting into territorial squabbles; a couple of skulking Hermit Thrushes; Song Sparrows, American Robins, and Red-winged Blackbirds calling from just about everywhere. Several species of ducks were swimming about and I was hoping to get some closeups, but they disapprove of paparazzi and kept their distance.

Then I picked out a distant Common Merganser just as he came up from a dive, and he seemed to have something in his beak. I instantly pulled up my camera and started shooting away on burst mode. I ended up with 42 fairly in-focus shots of the bird trying to down a ginormous fish that my good friend Mick Fiocchi identified as a northern pike.

With my binoculars I could see the fish thrashing and the duck struggling to swallow it, but I never could have picked out the details that my photos show, even with my spotting scope. I thought the duck might win the battle, but the fish was just too big. Finally the merganser spit it out and swam nonchalantly toward a female. I don’t know if she was impressed or not; before I could get her photo, she dived. The pike went under and is probably right this moment salivating over the thought of dining on baby mergansers in a month or so.

I have no idea how far I was from this exciting interaction. I’m terrible at gauging distances, usually leaving that to my camera, which provides a pretty accurate focus distance in the photo’s EXIF information. This time it said the distance was infinity, the exact same as when I photograph the moon, though I’m pretty sure the duck and fish were closer than that.

As Forest Gump almost said, birdwatching, whether you’re using binoculars, a spotting scope, or just your own senses, is like a box of chocolates—you never know what you’re going to get, but it’s certain to be sweet. Birding with a camera is just as sweet, and leaves you with a lovely, lingering aftertaste as well.