How Not To Pass Up A Perching Pipit
Taken near Fort Langley, British Columbia, Canada.
Instructions:
- Stalk extremely slowly keeping your binoculars or camera as the case may be continually obscuring your face.
- Move only a half step at a time, or a full step if needing to straddle any obstacles along your path for the next fifty yards or so.
- Pay no heed to the high grass in your face or to the tangle of thorns at your feet that perchance may trip you up... and then down.
- Never look the subject bird in the face, but keep your head down using only your peripheral vision to determine how close you are getting to the bird.
- Keeping your head down will also benefit you by helping you avoid stepping on any fresh or over ripened dog feces that may sprinkle your path which could result in ticking you off and offending the bird.
- When you finally get to within full frame distance of your subject, duck and weave and contort your (past the due date) frame into whatever form works for the moment to capture a less obscured picture of of a back-lit pipit that you can manage.
- Finally, don't let that oft occurring annoying little twig in the foreground that ruins the very rare clear view of a well stalked bird that almost never perches get the better of you. You have relatives that will do that for you. ;-)
American Pipit
How Not To Pass Up A Perching Pipit
Taken near Fort Langley, British Columbia, Canada.
Instructions:
- Stalk extremely slowly keeping your binoculars or camera as the case may be continually obscuring your face.
- Move only a half step at a time, or a full step if needing to straddle any obstacles along your path for the next fifty yards or so.
- Pay no heed to the high grass in your face or to the tangle of thorns at your feet that perchance may trip you up... and then down.
- Never look the subject bird in the face, but keep your head down using only your peripheral vision to determine how close you are getting to the bird.
- Keeping your head down will also benefit you by helping you avoid stepping on any fresh or over ripened dog feces that may sprinkle your path which could result in ticking you off and offending the bird.
- When you finally get to within full frame distance of your subject, duck and weave and contort your (past the due date) frame into whatever form works for the moment to capture a less obscured picture of of a back-lit pipit that you can manage.
- Finally, don't let that oft occurring annoying little twig in the foreground that ruins the very rare clear view of a well stalked bird that almost never perches get the better of you. You have relatives that will do that for you. ;-)
American Pipit