Metamatic Forums Socialising The Green Room 2011 New Year birding Challenge

Just a quick note to let you know of a project I'm involved with here in Southampton.

It's a kind of sponsored bird race - I'm on a mission to try and record 100 different bird species within the city boundary by Good Friday.
That's the date of the Southampton Passion Play

www.southamptonpassion.org.uk

which several friends of mine are taking part in.

I'm raising money to help fund the event, and you can follow my progress and see a list of the birds I encounter in my new blog:

http://birdingwithpassion.blog.com

There's also an interview/feature with yours truly about this challenge online for a few more days at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00cv3v5/Steve_Harris_07_01_2011

Starting at approximately 50/51 minutes in

Thanx

Excellent, a birder myself ,will have a read. Good luck!

Good luck with that. A birder myself , I haven't been out yet this year but that's a good challenge.

Great challenge, I wish you loads of success with it. I took part in the Facebook challenge last year to photograph 100 bird species in 2010 and although it was just for fun, it was very enjoyable and I ended up with 175 species photographed for the year. You can see them here:

http://daveshedman.multiply.com/photos/album/32/100_birds_for_2010

I'll be keenly following your progress and looking forward to seeing what interesting species you come up with. Good luck!!

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Thanks - and wow!!!

Some amazing birds there - and great pictures.

Sadly, I don't even OWN a camera, let alone know how to use it!!!

My challenge was much easier, Martin, I had an entire year to photograph 100 different species anywhere in the world (there are 953 different species in sub-Saharan Africa so 100 should never be too difficult) but you have only a few months to find 100 in a relatively small area. Good to see you're well into the fifties already!

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Good luck with the project Martin.

Over the last year I've taken to identifying and photographing all the varieties of bird who frequent our back garden. We've set up a buffet for them, consisting of various things. The seed mix and suet-filled half-coconuts have been the most popular, with the suet balls proving to be a waste of time and only the Bluetits taking an interest in the peanuts!

Get yourself a good entry level digital camera (Canon are always good, for example ), and get photographing those feathery friends!

Thanks for the advice Alex.

I'll need a good zoom too as bird photography is quite difficult on rivers, lakes and in woodland.

What kind of kit spec would suit this??

Mind you - I have no budget for such a thing...!

That particular only has a 4x optical zoom, so not the best, but I would say average optical zoom for that level of camera. Still good for getting to the other end of the garden from afar!

My own camera is a few models up from that one, and it has a 12x optical zoom, which is much better. Then of course, you're looking at higher prices and we're still not talking big, professional SLR level. Many cameras also come with Image Stabilisation (IS) these days, which is very handy when trying to photograph birds, especially the fast moving ones like Blue Tits.

I suggested that particular Canon as a good 'starter' camera (my wife just bought one) since you said you don't own one, although as yo can imagine, there's a lot of choice (probably too much, as is the case with almost everything nowadays) out there. But most 'budget' cameras don't have that great a zoom; anything in the £100-300 price bracket will probably come with sufficient lens capability; 10x and above.

This sounds like it should be in a camera thread...

Wow! I didn't realise that there were so many Foxx fans also into birdwatching!! Myself included. Must admit I've never tried photographing them. Perhaps I should give it a go too.