Rose-breasted Grosbeak yields euphoric moment for Branchport photographer
by Paul English –
The songbirds that visit my backyard have lessened for the summer but I still see on occasion my favorite bird, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak! Every spring I can’t wait till they show up. Being a nature photographer, I have been trying to get worthy shots of them for several years. This year two pairs showed up and my experience and persistence have paid off. They regularly have visited my backyard feeders and I euphorically obtained the images I had been dreaming about.
Those familiar with the Rose- breasted Grosbeak know how exciting it is to see, especially the males with the brilliant rose-red chevron on their breast, black head and wings with streaks of white, white underneath and thick pale pink bill. The female is a very beautiful bird as well with their brown color and boldly white striped head and spotted wing bars and white underneath with streaks of brown and the same thick pink bill. They also can be recognized with their beautiful song which sounds quite like a Robin only sweeter, another factor which tops off this bird as one of my favorites!
I have been photographing birds for a few years and I can tell you it can be very challenging. Putting it all together takes knowledge of the birds you are photographing and good camera equipment, including a telephoto lens. Considerable time put into practicing the camera skills needed, time and patience waiting for the subject to arrive, cooperative weather, good lighting and a photo blind are all beneficial in obtaining quality images of birds. That being said, I now have the experience , the quality equipment and the bird knowledge to get these images of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak and many other birds. I don’t want to get into the technical end of photographing birds in this article, but want to describe the feeling of what it is like getting the shot I have been dreaming about!
First sight of a Rose-breasted Grosbeak in the spring got me all excited and with an ideal set up – a photo blind, bird feeders up, and trees and bushes nearby for the birds to land on – I was ready to get the shot! Once the Grosbeaks found my feeders and were coming in on a regular basis I was ready for the moment they landed on a perch nearby. Spending time in a photo blind requires patience waiting for your subject to arrive. You have to be ready at all times as they appear at any second and getting one in the camera and focused quickly is not easy. What I mean is birds don’t just sit there posing for you in a perfect position; no sir, 9 times out of 10 times the moment you are ready to get a shot the bird hops or flies to another branch! Then getting the bird facing you and having them posed in a pleasing position is the next problem you have.
On one beautiful early morning in mid-May while sitting in my blind a beautiful male Rose-breasted Grosbeak landed on the Cherry blossom branch near the feeder! I was saying to myself this is it! But he was facing the wrong way and I was hoping he did not hop to another branch or go right to the feeder. One thing about Rose-breasted Grosbeaks is they are not like other birds that flitter about every second. They are calmer and will stay in one place for a longer time than most songbirds. So I waited camera ready with my finger on the shutter ready to fire if my beautiful Grosbeak was going to spin around to face me. Several seconds (it felt like minutes) went by and sure enough he spun around and gave me the pose you see in the photo! The second I squeezed the shutter I knew that shot was special!
It was a little different story with the female you see in the second photo. A month went by and nothing came together to get the image I wanted of a female Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Several times one of the females landed near me but never facing me or staying long enough for that perfect shot. Then one day while spending a couple of hours in the blind and not seeing any birds I was just about to hang it up for the day when this gorgeous female landed on top of a pine branch and faced me perched just perfectly, hardly moving! I could not believe it so I fired away as she turned her head back and forth for that perfect pose almost as if she knew I was photographing her!
The feeling I had was the same euphoria as when I got the shot of the male! After spending the last few years trying I finally had my images of the male and female Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. Then, after editing the images in the computer I posted these shots on my Instagram site and became ecstatic as the Male Grosbeak was featured at 12 Instagram hubs with 21,000 likes and the female grosbeak was featured several times as well.
Well we are in the middle of summer now and I am spending less time in the backyard blind as the birds have moved on to their summer time destinations. I will be photographing other birds in other places in the coming months. My backyard habitat here keeps telling stories that I can share in the future. One thing is for sure; I can feel a sense of reward after observing and photographing my favorite bird, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak.
You can see more of Paul English’s nature photography at PaulEnglishImages.com. His Instagram page is @PaulEnglishImages. He currently is showing eight of his images at Image City in Rochester’s “Fur, Fin and Feathers” exhibit — through August 6th— and his Bald Eagle image was highlighted in the July 23rd Democrat and Chronicle in the Arts section promo about the show. Paul’s work can also be seen in Naples at Artizanns.
When not in a blind or traveling to capture images of bird and other wildlife, English can be found in Branchport, NY, where he is President of English Manufacturing, Inc., which was founded 21 years ago by English and his wife Debbie. The company specializes in machining services. Paul has applied his manufacturing expertise to his passion for bird photography. He and Paul Yarnall, a design Engineer and photographer from Canandaigua, have launched a new product called the PGD Tracker. The PGD Tracker is an External Sight Mount kit that facilitates photographing and tracking subjects in the camera, especially birds in flight and action photography. To see the PGD Tracker, go to PhotoGearDesigns.com.