Catch the birdie

Keen nature photographer Peter Travers goes bird spotting and shows you how to capture great wildlife photos – from large herons to tiny robins

-  Peter Travers

THE MISSION

Discover how easy it can be to take great winged wildlife photos in your local area

Time needed

2-3 hours

Skill level

Intermediate

Kit needed

• Super-telephoto zoom lens

QUICK TIP

The joy of modern Canon EOS cameras is they all create large file sizes, which gives you scope to crop pretty severely when necessary. Even the old-but-still-gold EOS 7D Mark II with its 20Mp sensor creates Raw images of 5472x3648 pixels, allowing us to crop tighter on this image of a faraway flying heron in the sky, with a resulting image of 3180x2120 pixels, which is still a decent size for most uses, including online and in print.

With restrictions lifting further in the UK recently, it’s been nice to get out and about with my Canon gear. I love the chance to venture into the deep countryside in search of photogenic wildlife, and for this big photo project I was on the hunt for birds. But these aren’t exotic birds, unobtainable to most of us, these are birds you’ll be able to find in your local region with a bit of forethought and planning.

Garden birds like robins are very common, and often quite tame and inquisitive, making them great for photos! Herons, on the other hand, are shy and very cautious and take time to find, and require more of a stealth approach. The trick is to find a local lake and get set up early in the shadows, and use a long super-telephoto zoom lens so you can shoot from a good distance without fear of scaring them off.