A foray into bird photography

Non-birders often assume, on hearing that I am a birdwatcher, that I take photos of the birds that I see. However, I have never really been much of a bird photographer, and until the advent of digital cameras I didn't even attempt it. When I got my first small digital camera, several years ago, I did some 'digiscoping' - taking pictures of birds through a telescope by holding the camera up to the eyepiece of the scope and zooming in as far as it would let me, and then clicking. I actually got some nice pictures that way but my cameras never seemed to last very long and I think their life might have been shortened by the fact that something was pressing against the extended lens of the camera in a way that wouldn't happen with more normal photography. 

As you might remember from my post about the Franklin's Gull twitch a few weeks ago (https://northormesbynaturalist.blogspot.com/2018/07/an-actual-twitch-i-went-on-today.html), it is possible to take pictures with a mobile phone camera held up to binoculars or a telescope, although the resulting pictures are not always very good (I've heard this technique referred to as 'phone-scoping').

Last year a fellow birder very kindly gave me a really good camera that he was no longer using (having upgraded to one with a bigger lens) but for various reasons I haven't used it much until now today, when I went to South Gare and then Redcar beach to try it out on whatever birds I came across. 

The results, some of which are shown below, were quite encouraging. Even on maximum zoom the birds are quite small in the pictures but by cropping the photos afterwards I was able to at least get identifiable pictures of several birds. 

I also tried using my mobile phone (an oldish i-Phone 5) to take some pictures through my telescope and the pics are much better than I was expecting. However, it is very tricky to do, the results are pretty hit and miss as you can't see very clearly what you are actually photographing until you look at the pictures afterwards, and the birds have often moved out of the field of view by the time you've actually taken the picture. I've included a couple of my best shots using this technique, below all the ones taken with the 'real' camera. I'll let you judge (and please let me know what you think, in comments (but be kind as I know I'm not a very good photographer 😊)).

A very zoomed-in shot of a Little Egret (Egretta garzetta),
fishing on the Blast Furnace Pool at South Gare

A Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea) resting on a discarded lorry tyre
(about 20 metres away from the Little Egret)

A Sanderling (Calidris alba). This small wader (slightly smaller than a Song Thrush) breeds in the high arctic but is seen  in the UK in the winter, and as a passage migrant in spring and autumn. This was one of the most numerous bird species on the beach this afternoon, with several small flocks in constant motion up and down the shoreline

One of the five juvenile Knots (Calidris canuta) which were at Redcar this afternoon.
This is another arctic-breeding wader which returns to these shores in autumn and winter.
Being a juvenile this one can't be more than a few weeks old

An Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus). The white collar is only seen outside the nesting season

A Herring Gull (Larus argentatus)

A juvenile Herring Gull

The above photos were all taken with a Canon PowerShot SX40 HS. The three pictures below were taken with an iPhone5 through a Bushnell SpaceMaster telescope with a 22x wide angle lens. For the last one I zoomed in on the phone before taking the picture.

Oystercatchers and one Sanderling 

Herring Gulls of various ages

Oystercatcher and Sanderlings