Camera School

In this latest instalment, Paul Sterry of Nature Photographers explains how to use food and feeding to improve photo opportunities

The best ways to use food and feeding to get the best photos

Feeding birds is a familiar concept among birdwatchers and has a role to play in bird photography, too. Subjects can be enticed to visit locations of your choosing, and in ways that improve your ability to shoot with composition, lighting and background in mind.

Obviously, you need to tailor the food to suit the bird, so an understanding and appreciation of dietary requirements and feeding habits will improve your chances of success. But there is also a darker side to the feeding of birds purely for photography; the ethical aspects of bird-feeding will be touched upon here, but tackled in more detail in another article later in the series.

Garden feeders

Many people feed birds in the garden using a variety of products and feeding equipment to cater for the needs of as wide a range of species as possible. These options range from sunflower and seed-feeders, to fat-ball dispensers and half-coconut shells. And there is the option of scattering food on the ground – windfall apples and seed mix. With this range of methods deployed, many gardens have the potential to host a dozen or more bird species in good numbers; typically more are present in winter than summer.

Attracting birds to your feeders is the easy part, but taking pictures worthy of the effort requires thought. With nervous birds, use a portable hide, although the downside is that it restricts your viewing options. As an alternative, if you regularly sit quietly near the feeders with your camera set up, over a period of days or weeks, most birds will become accustomed to your presence.

If you are content to take birds sitting or perching on artificial feeders then photography is straightforward. But with a bit of imagination and planning, you can end up with images that look like they were taken in the wild.

Place natural twigs and branches adjacent to the feeding ports of a feeder, for example, and hungry birds will queue up and perch briefly.

Be sure to think about the choice of perch though and, using clamps, if you can mimic the twig’s orientation in nature then so much the better.

Use fieldcraft and natural history insight to be creative. As an example, you might consider collecting a bag of Teasel seeds in late summer, and keeping them dry until late winter. Scatter them onto

Fast frame rate and rapid, accurate a dry Teasel head, shake it a bit, and they

autofocusing were needed to capture this Storm Petrel in flight will naturally lodge in the seedhead’s cavities. Placed in the garden this will be an irresistible source of food for Goldfinches and produce natural-looking photographic results.

Drill holes in a branch and plug them with peanuts, for Great Spotted Woodpeckers and Nuthatches.

This Blue Tit was photographed as it approached a winter feeding station, with its perch framed by appropriate placement of foliage.

Concealed drilled holes containing peanuts were all the enticement this Great Spotted Woodpecker needed for a photogenic visit to the garden.