Olive-backed Sunbird Nesting

This is the nesting season. Once the migrants leave (ie by late March), our local birds go into high gear courting each other, gathering nesting material and having their babies - I seem to see that everywhere - from mynas, to doves, to hornbills and now the Olive-backed Sunbird. Birds in Singapore tend to nest at this time as there is less competition for food from migratory birds, and thus more grub to feed a new brood of twittering, hungry, naked (yeah, they are featherless and blind when born) chicks.

I was pleased to locate the nest of an Olive-backed Sunbird right where I live. Found this brown droplet-of-a-nest at a tree in my carpark on Saturday 25 April 2009, while photographing backyard birds from my window. Its pretty far away - about 30m. I've been monitoring it assiduously in between reading Angels and Demons. This is the female bird - it flew to and fro sporadically from the nest to fetch food for its young. V difficult to photograph as intervals between its arrival can be very long or short, and when it arrives it goes straight into the nest without lingering outside. As such, it is visible from outside its nest for less than 2 seconds before flying off again. Super frustrating. Since I'm practicising my hand held shots, there is no tripod in use here. So aarghs, things are still pretty shaky.

There is no way to photograph any chicks because of my distance and angle of photograph, so its just mummy and very occassionally daddy. And no way to see what is being fed, sigh. Maybe I should set up my digiscope instead. Here, mummy is leaving the nest in a downward drop.

Oriental Pied Hornbill Nesting at Changi Village

Am now going on to my next phase in birding - bird photography! I am still a birder at heart, and will binocular the bird first before photographing it. Still, I'm tired of taking crappy, noisy photos with my old Canon S5 IS 12x zoom prosumer, and would like to take beautiful, crisp, handheld photos, especially of birds seen during my travels.

So after much research and some advice from friends, I almost impulsively bought a Canon EOS 50D DSLR camera, a Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM Telephoto Lens, a Canon Speedlite 580EX II Flash, and a not-so-good Manfrotto tripod (would want to upgrade to a proper, lightweight, sturdy Gitzo/Markins tripod soon) on 21 March 2009.

Have gone out on some shooting trips already, plus also photographed the birds seen at my bedroom window. Have also been reading wildlife photography books. Here are some of my better shots and some not-so-perfect-shots-but-it-captures-behaviour.

A male Oriental Pied Hornbill regurgitates a red cherry to feed his mate who is sealed inside the treehole of an Angsana tree in Changi Village. Too late to set up my tripod when the bird flew in, so this shot was handheld...results not too bad lah...but not that sharp yet. Taken at f5.6, 1/250 on 12 April 2009. Notice the drizzly weather.

The same Hornbill crouches to get closer to his beloved, who is literally imprisoned by love.

This photo was taken the week before on 4 April 2009, with my shaky tripod at 1/60 I think. Lena, Tim and I were drinking teh si and eating prata at the coffeeshop while getting up and down to take photos of these lovely birds. Over here, the male is bringing back what we think is mud to seal the female in. If not, it is probably helping to clear the goo that has accumulated in the nest hole.

We see the beak of the female here inside the treehole, also with the same mud/goo(?) mystery material, together with the male and his mud/goo(?) offering. Taken on 4 April 2009 on my lousy tripod. I hate this tripod, but must learn to overcome its severe shortcomings.