Nature Photography How To

If you want evidence that great wildlife images can be captured without expensive high-end gear, look no further, as you’ll see a variety of hilarious images of birds feeding their faces—all captured with a simple backyard “feeder cam.”

One challenge when photographing birds up close is they tend to take flight as soon as they’re approached. With that in mind, a Michigan-based woman known as Ostdrossel decided to pursue her love of birds by using a bird feeder camera to remotely capture photographs of her funny feathered friends.

Ostdrossel described her simple setup to My Modern Met, explaining, “It consists of a camera box, much like a trail camera, that has a macro lens on the top and a regular one on the bottom.” The inside of the box contains a shelf with the motion-activated camera that rips off 10 frames per second.

She explained to My Modern Met that her camera starts shooting whenever a bird arrives at the bowl of food, and if she leaves the system activated she sometimes gets up to 7,000 photos a day. For most of us that would be a lot of images to review, but Ostdrossel says, “My evening pleasure and routine is to go through all of them, delete the bad ones, and slightly edit and save the keepers.”

Because her hungry subjects are unaware they’re being photographed when they arrive for a midday snack or dinner, they appear totally relaxed while striking a variety of fabulous poses.

You can read the full story on My Modern Met, and see more of Ostdrossel’s images on her Instagram page. And be sure to check out a powerful tutorial we posted earlier, explaining how to capture stunning photographs of birds in flight with conventional gear.