Texas Birds in Spring

South Texas Specialties

The Rio Grand Valley in South Texas is an incredible place to photograph exotic species of songbirds and raptors. We spent 4 days at the Laguna Seca Ranch with our group of photographers creating images of both rare and common birds. One of the highlights this year was watching Bronzed Cowbirds aka Vampire Bird (photo at right) display for females. A new focus this year was capturing raptors and song birds in flight. We used specialty set-ups to provide plenty of skills practice. We followed up with classroom time on a variety of topics including:

• Bird Photography Basics
• Tips for Texas Songbird Photography
• Editing Birds in PhotoShop and Lightroom
• Object Removal for Bird Photography
• Cropping, Resizing and Denoise
• 2 Image Reviews

Colorful Songbirds on Perches

Laguna Seca Ranch is know for it's quantity of birds and also for the beautiful perches they land on. Every day new perches are created from local foliage for the birds to land on. This helps create photos with clean, clear backgrounds that look like they are right out of a field guide. The Northern Cardinal at right is on a perch of lavender Crepe Myrtle

Two Raptor Sessions

We included two raptor sessions this year to give our photographers more opportunities for birds in flight. This year we phootgraphed Harris Hawks, Crested Caracaras, Turkey Vultures and Black Vultures during the raptor sessions. There were often more than 20 raptors at a time fighting for space on the perches.

Spring Behavior

Spring courting displays are very common when we visit the ranch in May. Northern Bobwhites are paired up and tend to stay close together. Northern Cardinals and Pyrrhuloxia can be photographed "kissing" and many of the male birds show aggressive displays to ward off the competition. This is a great time to see and photograph interesting bird behaviour.

Birds in Flight

Photographing birds in flight is a more advanced skill. This is especially true when trying to capture small, quick songbirds in flight. Our workshop is designed to give beginners and experienced photographers alike, a progressive sequence to help them capture birds in flight. We used pre-release/pro-capture technology along with special perch set ups to help create dramatic images of songbirds in flight.