Wild Bird Wednesday – My Secret Revealed

Hi everyone! It’s Cindy here. Today I want to show you one of my favorite birds that comes to our feeders.

A Male Baltimore Oriole

We’ve had orioles in our yard every year since we’ve lived here (30 years!) but until recently we didn’t see them very regularly. May of 2018 was the first time we had one come to our hummingbird feeder. Charlie quickly made a orange feeder for them so they wouldn’t hog all the hummer food and they’ve been back every year. The above picture was taken in a different area of our yard near our suet feeder which the orioles like to use too.

You may have noticed that many of the bird pictures I’ve posted recently (here and here) have a similar looking background and the birds are often perched on the same stick so I thought I would let you in on my secret to getting the birds to pose on a particular stick.

The first order of business is to be well camouflaged.

When I first started, the weather was colder so I used my insulated camo jacket with camo gloves and a camo blanket I had to cover my tripod and disguise most of my body.

Here is what the birds saw of me

Now lets see what I was aiming at.

Suet Feeder with posing stick

Charlie found a nice stick in our yard and fashioned a way to mount it on a pvc pipe that was secured in the ground. At first we shoved some suet into cracks in the stick to help attract the birds to land on it. Once they got used to it the birds would land on the stick before going to the suet feeder and also look for the suet on the stick. You can see some of the orange colored suet at the top of the stick in the picture above. That worked well but we didn’t like the way the orange suet stuck out in the pictures so we modified the stick.

Four holes drilled into the back of the stick

We regularly filled the holes with suet

Having the holes filled with suet allowed the birds to hang out on the stick more to give me plenty of opportunities to photograph them. This worked pretty well but my camouflage needed to be better and it would be too hot when the weather warmed up so I upgraded to a LensCoat Lightweight LensHide.

Me in the LensCoat Lightweight LensHide

Here is a side view of the setup

With my camera set to burst mode I would wait for someone to show up. In order to get the shot I was looking for I often would capture a series like this:

Oh look! There is suet back here.

Nom, nom, nom.

Down the hatch it goes.

Now smile for the camera.

This set up has been working very well and allowed me to capture pictures of the birds in our yard like never before. We have plans on setting up another posing stick in our perennial garden near the bird bath and mealworm feeder.

In case you were wondering here is a look at the gear I’m using when I photograph the birds.

FujiFilm X-T4 with XF 100-400mm lens + 1.4x teleconverter
Manfrotto 502AH Pro Video Head
Manfroto 3011BN tripod

A closer view of the tripod head and camera.

This is a very sturdy set up that comfortably holds the large lens and allows me freedom of movement to track the birds.

I hope you enjoyed seeing how I’ve been able to capture pictures of the birds in our yard. Just to let you know I often have to sit in this position for a couple of hours to be able to catch the birds at the feeder.

I’m joining the Wild Bird Wednesday blog hop. You should stop by and see some more birds.

I was not paid to endorse any of the products in this post and purchased all the equipment for myself. The links and descriptions were included in case anyone was interested in the items used.