Fight club

How to capture the key moments when garden birds take to the air and go to war. Andrew Fusek Peters shares his set-up and techniques which are crucial to capture both flight and fight action

- Andrew Fusek Peters

I began photographing garden birds in 2014 and was keen from the get-go to capture birds in flight but also battling scenes if the opportunity arose. My first method was pray and spray. I sat in the garden with feeders about 15 feet away. While keeping focus on the birds as they came to my feeders, I hoped that my trigger finger would be fast enough to respond to take-off, and then pressed the shutter fully down to capture a burst. The problem was that I was too close and too visible to the birds, who were often shy of my presence. When they did come in, my reaction time was rarely fast enough and most shots were out of focus.

Branching out and feeding time

Here are the changes that upped my game. First, visit a local wood or park and find a nice-looking dead branch. This is both to hang feeders off and to drill various holes in from above to put seeds into. Hidden holes are a breakthrough as it means that you can get a shot just with bird and branch. Also, by placing feeders well apart underneath the branch, you create negative space between with room for the birds to fly into so that feeders can stay out of shot.

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