Lacerta Bilineata
Feeding Time!
My best photos are here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...
Female Black Redstart with prey| Phoenicurus ochruros | 07-2022 | Ticino | Switzerland
More TICINO/TESSIN Wildlife Photos (all taken in my garden in Monteggio/Ti, Switzerland): it.lacerta-bilineata.com/ramarro-occidentale-lacerta-bili... (the website exists in ESPAÑOL, FRANÇAIS, ITALIANO, ENGLISH, DEUTSCH)
My latest ANIMAL VIDEO (warning, it's a bit shocking): www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2-Xszz7FI
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO:
So this is actually my first bird photo that I am happy with. Naturally, my underwhelming performance in the beaks-and-feather department is nobody's fault but mine (well, and the birds', obviously 😉). I just find avian photography incredibly hard; without some sort of camouflaged bird hide or a bazooka-sized zoom lens that allows you to keep a distance, our feathery friends tend to immediately spot two-legged intruders, and usually they avoid us "nature paparazzi" like the plague (and I can't blame them: after all, we humans are rarely a cause for joy and jubilation in the animal kingdom).
Building a bird hide was never going to work for me since it would conflict with my natural laziness, but what limits my photographic options even further is my stubborn insistence on concentrating solely on the fauna in my garden and its immediate surroundings. Because my garden - my little tropical paradise as I like to call it - is actually rather tiny: it's 40 square-meters, tops.
The main reason I force myself to adhere to this "strictly-garden rule" is to have a distinct profile for my website - www.lacerta-bilineata.com/other-fauna - and my Flickr gallery, because there already are millions of wildlife photographers, and most of them are vastly more talented than I am (and probably also less lazy 😉).
But operating within such a limited space also poses an interesting challenge, and it makes this photographic journey of mine more personal, because it forces me to look closer at the place I call home, and through my daily "safaris" in my garden I actually feel more connected to all the many lifeforms that share this little oasis with me.
There is an obvious downside though: Even though I've slightly "stretched" these rules - anything outside my garden is fair game as long as I don't stray further than 5 meters from the premises or I manage to photograph it from within my garden - certain animals are just very hard to capture (if they ever show up at all).
Which brings me back to my original subject: birds. And thankfully, at least some of them DO show up in and around my garden - but man, these fellas are a picky, nervous bunch. They like my garden just fine - just as long as I'm not in it. I can't remember a single time over the past year since I acquired my new camera that I had a clear shot of even so much as a feather, let alone the kind of detailed portrait I usually aim for.
Imagine my delight this summer when I realized a pair of cute black redstarts had built their nest underneath my neighbor's roof, and in order to quench their chicks' seemingly endless appetite, Mr and Mrs redstart could ill afford passing up the opportunity to hunt in a garden teeming with insect life such as mine - even when I was present.
It still took a lot of patience until mama redstart trusted me enough to get this close, but in the end I finally got my first presentable bird photo 😊
As always, many greetings from Switzerland; try to stay out of the heat and let me know what you think in the comments!
Feeding Time!
My best photos are here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...
Female Black Redstart with prey| Phoenicurus ochruros | 07-2022 | Ticino | Switzerland
More TICINO/TESSIN Wildlife Photos (all taken in my garden in Monteggio/Ti, Switzerland): it.lacerta-bilineata.com/ramarro-occidentale-lacerta-bili... (the website exists in ESPAÑOL, FRANÇAIS, ITALIANO, ENGLISH, DEUTSCH)
My latest ANIMAL VIDEO (warning, it's a bit shocking): www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2-Xszz7FI
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO:
So this is actually my first bird photo that I am happy with. Naturally, my underwhelming performance in the beaks-and-feather department is nobody's fault but mine (well, and the birds', obviously 😉). I just find avian photography incredibly hard; without some sort of camouflaged bird hide or a bazooka-sized zoom lens that allows you to keep a distance, our feathery friends tend to immediately spot two-legged intruders, and usually they avoid us "nature paparazzi" like the plague (and I can't blame them: after all, we humans are rarely a cause for joy and jubilation in the animal kingdom).
Building a bird hide was never going to work for me since it would conflict with my natural laziness, but what limits my photographic options even further is my stubborn insistence on concentrating solely on the fauna in my garden and its immediate surroundings. Because my garden - my little tropical paradise as I like to call it - is actually rather tiny: it's 40 square-meters, tops.
The main reason I force myself to adhere to this "strictly-garden rule" is to have a distinct profile for my website - www.lacerta-bilineata.com/other-fauna - and my Flickr gallery, because there already are millions of wildlife photographers, and most of them are vastly more talented than I am (and probably also less lazy 😉).
But operating within such a limited space also poses an interesting challenge, and it makes this photographic journey of mine more personal, because it forces me to look closer at the place I call home, and through my daily "safaris" in my garden I actually feel more connected to all the many lifeforms that share this little oasis with me.
There is an obvious downside though: Even though I've slightly "stretched" these rules - anything outside my garden is fair game as long as I don't stray further than 5 meters from the premises or I manage to photograph it from within my garden - certain animals are just very hard to capture (if they ever show up at all).
Which brings me back to my original subject: birds. And thankfully, at least some of them DO show up in and around my garden - but man, these fellas are a picky, nervous bunch. They like my garden just fine - just as long as I'm not in it. I can't remember a single time over the past year since I acquired my new camera that I had a clear shot of even so much as a feather, let alone the kind of detailed portrait I usually aim for.
Imagine my delight this summer when I realized a pair of cute black redstarts had built their nest underneath my neighbor's roof, and in order to quench their chicks' seemingly endless appetite, Mr and Mrs redstart could ill afford passing up the opportunity to hunt in a garden teeming with insect life such as mine - even when I was present.
It still took a lot of patience until mama redstart trusted me enough to get this close, but in the end I finally got my first presentable bird photo 😊
As always, many greetings from Switzerland; try to stay out of the heat and let me know what you think in the comments!