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ISSN 1492-8132
Issue 143, © 2006
No reprints without permission
Sponsor's Space
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The folks at Bird & Cage aim to provide bird keepers with a great selection of good quality birdcages and accessories for great prices, along with some of the best customer service you will find anywhere. The newest cage might just be one of the best up-and-down small flight cage combos you'll ever see!
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A recent customer says,"We just wanted to thank you for the wonderful service with our previous order for the 484 wrought iron cage in egg shell white and the 2481 set of two breeding cages. We are delighted with the quality and price of these cages and with the excellent customer service we received when we called to inquire about delivery date. In fact, we are so pleased that we have ordered an additional set of breeding cages for our lovebirds. We cannot praise your service too highly and will not fail to recommend you to other bird fanciers."
For a full selection of cages and cage accessories, visit BirdandCage.com
Help Needed
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Do you know of a great bird site which deserves a review? Maybe you have a favourite tip or trick that you like to use, or know of a product that has made your bird's life better or easier to manage in some way? Why not share them with other Flock readers? Send us your tales of how you cope, or how your birds confuse and puzzle, interest and amuse you, and we will share them with the rest of our readers in a future issue.
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"I love your website, your information has made me a very well-informed canary friend/owner. Thank you."
"Thank you for your love of birds and your commitment for helping those of us who are learning to share our lives with our feathered friends!"
"Robirda's website, bird board and e-zine are invaluable tools for any birdlover."
"I ordered 'Canary Tales' by Linda Hogan last year...Although I fully recommend buying the book, I find Robirda's book much more complete, easier to read with less difficulty finding information."
"I cannot thank you enough for your kind and considerate responses to all of our questions. Your website has really been a wonderful find for us! And we absolutely love your canary CD!"
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"Thank you so much for the book on canaries. That is a really nice book. I needed one, because I bought my Mom two canaries, a male and a female, we don't know anything about them. I'm so glad to have this book, I couldn't believe how much was in there. Thank you so much!"
Welcome to Robirda's Companion Bird eZine
For breeder or pet bird owners who care.
Website News
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Our 150th issue of Flock Talk will be out soon, marking close to six years since our first issue in Sept 2000. We think the occasion calls for something special, so we've decided to have a Flock Talk Photo Contest! We're able to offer you some great prize packages, thanks to contest sponsors Bird and Cage Co, National Bird Designs Inc, and Robirda Online.
To help you get started, our article this issue offers ideas on how to get good photos of your bird friends; as you've probably noticed, it isn't always easy to convince them to sit still long enough to let you get a good shot! We're hoping that our article will inspire you to try and get creative with your camera, and that our great prize packages will inspire you to enter your pictures into our contest.
We'll be accepting entries between now and midnight eastern time on July 3rd, 2006, During now and then we will be posting all entries to a soon-to-arrive new web area named 'Flock Photos'. Beginning on July 4th viewers will be able to vote for their favourite pictures, until midnight on July 15th. The winners will be announced in Flock Talk's 150th issue, on Sunday, July 16th.
We have 10 fantastic bird-owner's prize packages up for grabs, with a approximate combined total value of over $800! So join in the fun, get those shutters snapping, and let's show the world just how wonderful our birds really are!
Contest rules, entry info and prize package details can be found here.
Feature Article
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Photographing Birds
by R C McDonald
www.robirda.com
Copyright © April 2006
It's rarely easy to get a good picture of a finch or a canary; in fact, making the attempt is rather like combining two of the most difficult fields in photography, wildlife photography and indoor photography!
True, many finches and canaries are not exactly 'wildlife' in the true sense of the term anymore. But they are difficult to photograph for the same reasons as their wilder relations; they are small, move quickly, and can be difficult to focus on clearly unless you are quite close to them.
Of course, once you manage to get close enough to take a good picture, they are quite likely to stop what they are doing to stare at you, obviously wondering what on earth the human is up to now. This can make it difficult to get a good 'candid' shot, where the bird is acting normally and either unaware of or unconcerned with the camera.
Add in the difficult lighting usually encountered in indoor situations, and the real surprise is that there actually is some very good photos of finches and canaries in existance at all! They are mute testimony, to those who've tried to duplicate the feat, of hours of trial and experimentation, combined with a good bit of tenacity and persistence. Getting good pictures of finches, canaries, or other small birds is tricky even once you have a good idea where to start!
If you have a tame bird, you've got a head start on the rest of us - it's a lot easier to set up bird-sized indoor 'picture studio', as you won't have to worry so much about your subject attempting to escape. But for the majority of canary and finch owners, this is a prime consideration.
Bright, indirect lighting surrounding the entire area where you will be taking your pictures is a necessity, if you want to get a series of good clear photos that show plenty of detail. The more shadows you have, the more details will be obscured, so you want bright lighting on either side of the subject, but out of the camera's view.
If you have an adjustable flash, you can use it to 'fill in' the lighting for the front of the shot with your flash set on low. Otherwise your best bet is probably to turn the flash off, and eliminate any shadows on the front of your subject by using a bright light directly overhead, preferably placed not too far above the camera, and very slightly behind its point of view.
If you prefer, you can use only two lights, one on either side of the camera, slightly higher up than its point of view. This works fairly well, but causes more shadowing than using three sources of lighting, which can affect the results.
Once you have your lighting arranged, you need to think about how you're going to use your camera. There's several possibilities here. You can;
- Take pictures of the entire cage with the bird in it, or
- Take pictures through an open cage door or an opening made especially to fit your camera and lens, or
- Build a cage especially for use when taking bird photos.
Let's go over these options one at a time.
The first is obviously the easiest, and especially if you want a picture of your bird inside his home cage, this option may prove satisfactory for your purposes. Don't be surprised, though, if most details of everything inside the cage are lost in the final result! Most cameras will automatically focus on the cage bars, leaving the cage inhabitant(s) and furnishings blurred in the background.
This means that if you want a clear picture of an individual bird or a small group of birds, one of the latter two options will produce much better results.
If you don't mind including the 'cage' background in your pictures, you can often get some fairly good shots through an open cage door. Some cages even have several doors handily located in various areas of the cage, which helps make it easy to dedicate one to your camera.
If your camera happens to have a remote control, you're in luck, and can easily arrange some nice candid shots; simply fix your camera to an open cage door (blocking the rest of the opening if necessary). Check to be sure that your camera will see the right field of view, then sit back and wait until you think you've got a good picture, and take your snap.
If you don't like where the cage door is positioned and want to take your pictures from a different angle, consider cutting a special 'door' into the cage for your camera lens; you can easily arrange to close the gap with a small wire 'doorflap' when not in use. Place a small platform just outside the lens door for the camera to sit on, fix the camera in place, then just sit back and wait for your chance at a good shot!
Some cameras will allow you to program a series of shots, and even allow you to set the intervals between the pictures. This is similar to the techniques used to capture the Canary Cam photo series, which you can view at www.canarycam.com.
A small digital camera was wired to a specially-made opening near the top and one end of a breeding cage, then pictures were collected through remote operation of the camera. The birds quickly became accustomed to the camera, and for the most part utterly ignored it, even when it blinked as it took its shots. It did get a few stares at first, but those quickly ceased when nothing happened.
The third option for getting good bird photos is by far the most troublesome to arrange, but once set up, will offer you the most options for collecting a wide variety of excellent shots. This can include the ability to choose any background you like, which can open up your possibilities enormously. All it takes, is setting up your own 'shooting cage'.
This is, quite simply, a plain box cage, often made to be three and a half to four feet long or so, and wide enough to allow your camera adequate scope. If you size each end of the box to be eighteen inches by twenty-four inches, you can build in a slot in the top just in front of the back end, to allow you to insert various cardboard or pasteboard backgrounds, using the over-sized paper-boards available in many craft stores.
You can even, if you like, fasten background photos to these paper 'boards' to slide into or out of your 'shooting cage' at will! This allows you to set the background colour or photo to whatever you like, allowing you much more scope for creativity and convenience when taking photos.
The opposite end of your shooting cage will need two doors; a larger, lower door for accessing the inside of your shooting cage, and another smaller, higher-placed camera-lens-sized door, including a small platform for the camera to sit on when the lens door is open.
Make sure your lower access door is large enough for you to easily add or remove accessories, perches, or birds, and of course, to allow for easy clean-ups. Build everything at this end of the cage of solid wood, so that you will be able to stand at the camera and watch cage activity through the lens without the birds being able to see you.
You could use wire for the cage sides, but remember, most of the light your camera sees will be coming through these wires, and you may wind up seeing wire-shadows cast across your pictures. To avoid this, I like to make the sides of the cage of plexi-glass, which is good and sturdy, but won't cast shadows. Others use mosquito netting, which, although it does cast light shadows, will usually be quite unnoticeable.
The use of mosquito netting instead of plexiglass sides gets around the need for an access door at the camera end of the cage, but on the downside makes it easier for the bird to escape when being put into or removed from the cage.
As a final touch for your shooting cage, rig a good sturdy set of legs, arranging them so that once your cage is set up, your camera will be at your eye level. This way you will be able to easily stand in front of it to look through the lens to gauge your shots, change your settings or what-have-you.
In order to get the best pictures, use as good a camera as you can manage, and make sure that the lens is good quality, too. You can have the fanciest camera around, but if the lens isn't of equally good quality, your photos will suffer!
Below this article I've added some links to websites that focus on helping their visitors learn to take good pictures of wild birds. Most of these articles were meant for photographers using film cameras rather than digital, but many of their ideas will apply to digital camera users too.
Apply some of their ideas for getting good snapshots of wild birds to taking pictures of your own birds, and you just might find yourself taking better photos than you'd ever before thought possible!
by R C McDonald
www.robirda.com
Copyright © April 2006
"Everyone always asks me why my birds are such beautiful singers and breed such magnificent babies...I tell them that I learned from Robirda! While they give their birds all kinds of 'magical' formulas, I just follow your guide to 'keep it simple.' My birds are now very healthy, and there has been no recurrence of the infection. Thank Goodness!" R.C., Florida
Song CD
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Do you like to keep your canaries singing? Our CD of Robirda's canaries in full song stimulates pet canaries to sing more, and is a popular choice for many canary owners. But it can also be used to bring more wild birds to your feeders, or to make your pet parrots more comfortable with their surroundings.
Best of all - we've now sold enough CDs to allow us to lower the price! So if you haven't gotten yours yet, now's a great time! We get a great deal of positive comments from happy customers, so we're sure you'll be pleased. Here's what two recent buyers had to say:
"Thank you for creating such a beautiful CD. I just purchased 'New Songs From the Birdroom' for my cockatiel to listen to whenever I have to leave him alone for any period of time. The CD is absolutely fantastic, thanks again!"
"My 'baby' Jingles and I are both thrilled with your CD! It arrived within days of my purchase and it's the best CD out there! I have purchased every CD available, and yours was the only one my canary responded to. The CD has attracted the wild birds outside his little garden sanctuary, so my canary has lots of vocal competition now, which makes him sing even more."
Find out more about our Canary Song CD!
A recent consultee says, "Thank you, Robirda! You are the best, a total delight to read, a terrific story teller. I have learned so much. I do have more questions, unrelated, now that I see what a fount of wisdom and tidbits you are. But I will not allow you to extend yourself more on the original $15, so I will submit another question 'officially'. You go above and beyond the call of duty in your wonderful responses and they are worth even more than that."
Robirda's customers find her answers to be detailed, reliable, caring and supportive. When you need help with housing, feeding, care or behavioral questions, Robirda can help you learn to understand your birds better!
For You
& Your Birds,
With Love
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We rely on YOU to help keep this publication and its associated websites alive.If you find help you need in this ezine or on one of our websites, please consider joining our sponsors.
Read testimonials or find out more about becoming a sponsor. If you're looking for something different, check our home page for links to all our great products!
Our next issue is due Sunday, April 23rd. We hope you and your birds stay safe, well and happy in the meantime, and we look forward to seeing you all then!
"You have the most informative and helpful small bird site on the Web. I have found your information priceless and inspiring."
"Hi Robirda! Thanks for your thoughts. My little one is singing as loudly as ever. He looks much better today. Your advice was most welcome; I'm particularly grateful about the recipes! I sent you the same amount the vet charged me; you have done no less than he did. You are a real blessing to all of us canary lovers the world over."
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