Now is prime woodcock courtship season – the males are performing their evening aerial displays above fields, town baseball diamonds, and other open spaces. They’re fun birds to watch and fascinating for their oddity; to name a few of woodcocks’ weirder features: they have hinge-tipped upper bills for grasping prey underground, ears positioned below their eyes, and eyes set far back on their heads, allowing an exceptionally wide range of vision.
Another special species feature: they’re next-to-impossible to photograph. That’s because they only make themselves conspicuous in low light conditions (in the Upper Valley of NH/VT, on April 7, we estimated prime courtship flying time at 7:30 p.m.).
Here are a few successful examples of photographs from the past two weeks, culled from several hundred attempts. Photographer Tig Tillinghast’s trick for getting these shots (other than obsessive picture-taking) was setting up in a space by a field where he could get about 20 feet away from a bird when it landed, without disrupting its activities. “An aperture of f/2.8 (pretty wide) or bigger is usually needed,” he said. “And, even then, the darkness will demand very slow shutter speeds.” To keep the shutter speeds from being too slow (and adding blur), he recommends “pushing your ISO/sensitivity setting to 3200+, and keep raising it as it gets darker. Depending on your ability to hold the camera still…you might get lucky with shots around 1/6th of a second to 1/10th of a second.”
