2019-11-22~24 Late November Yard-birds

Yellow-Rumped Warbler - Setophaga coronata auduboni — A few captured moments in November with fly-catching warblers at my Poway home. Poway California in San Diego County.

Activity at the water feature over my fish pond was hot and heavy in late November. I thought I could enjoy the activity with my binoculars, but when a female Summer Tanager showed up four days in a row, I broke down and setup my camera gear. It was par-for-the course that the tanager did not show up to get its picture taken, and neither did the gang of about 12~15 Acorn Woodpeckers that often visit early and late in the day.

Later I noticed lots of small winged ant-like insects emerging from crevices in the ground. I’d seen this phenomenon before, and it has been followed by lots of fly-catching warblers and any other hungry birds who caught notice of the activity. Sure enough, the next day the birds discovered the fresh food source and began hawking these small winged bugs. Fly-catching birds are difficult to capture with a camera, but that did not stop me from trying. After many hundreds of attempts I reviewed the resulting images and found a half-dozen frames with usable images.

Another experiment I tried was pre-focusing on the birdbath and operating the camera remotely. This resulted in but a few usable shots from hundreds of attempts. My goal was to capture in-flight images, knowing full-well it was a very sketchy proposition to get the birds in frame and in focus. Below are the results from several days of my attempts. Most of the better images were captured in the traditional method, while I sat in a blind capturing my avian guests.