Interviews

I interviewed 17 bird photographers as part of my Science Communication master's research at the University of Otago. I asked each participant to select one of their photos that was special to them, and not necessarily their 'best' or most popular shot.

The below two photographers had a particular awareness of their connection to nature. Highlights from their interviews are shared here with their permission. Steve Attwood and Guy Vickers don't represent all bird photographers, but they are certainly not alone in enjoying a sense of acceptance by wild creatures.

Steve Attwood

Steve has 25 years' experience in bird photography as a serious pursuit.

Special photo: Female kārearea (New Zealand falcon), Zealandia, Wellington.
Other Māori names for New Zealand falcon.

Why did you choose this photo?
Firstly, I've always been fascinated by birds, particularly by birds of prey, and falcons in particular. At our bach, out fishing or tramping we'd often see falcon in the high country. I just found them such admirable birds, their speed and their beauty. And their fearlessness, because they were utterly unafraid of human beings. They would come very close to us, or allow us very close to them, unless of course they had a nest, in which case they attacked us.

Secondly, it is the best example I can think of where I have developed a relationship with an individual bird. I was the one who happened to find out where they were nesting in Zealandia that year. I used to go every lunchtime and follow the falcons. I wore the same clothes and I developed a little greeting call which was a mimic of their greeting call to each other. I'd walk up the path and say "Hi, it's just me again". Within a couple of weeks, I had earned their trust and I was able to get incredibly close to them without changing their behaviour. It was almost like they'd chosen to let me into their life to such an intimate degree that I was witnessing their mating, their nest building, and I even discovered that when the chick was hatched, the male so wanted to feed the chicks, but at first the female wouldn't let him. And he was really funny. He was really begging, mewling like a little kitten, to be allowed to feed the chicks. But she would insist on taking the food from him. It's almost as if she didn't quite trust him not to eat them or something. It wasn't until the chicks grew to a size that it needed both of them to be hunting that she quite reluctantly allowed the male to start feeding.

So it was that sort of intimacy. I'd been allowed not just a window onto their world, but actually they'd opened the door and let me into it. We had come to this understanding of each other.

Of all your photos from that time, what’s special to you about this one?

Previously when I'd been there, they'd land further away and then gradually sort of work up to coming onto that branch. But this was probably the first time that she'd flown straight onto it. She'd already seen me, she knew I was there. She'd stashed some birds that she'd killed earlier into the crook of that branch. And so she pulled one of them out and started breaking it up into little pieces to take down to her baby right in front of me.

It was that, plus the fact that she'd fanned out her tail like that and the wind was behind her, ruffling up her feathers. It was such a natural pose. She'd stretched out her tail to just have a stretch and a relax, which told me how relaxed she was.

What do you remember from your senses, aside from what you saw?
The sounds first. The hunting and territorial call of a kārearea is quite a harsh kek-kek-kek-kek-kek, but what I didn't know is they greet each other with a soft, very intimate sort of mewing sound. It's quite plaintive, and that's the sound I was trying to reproduce when I walked up the track.

And then the tūī and the bellbirds and the chortles of the kākā, flying overhead, and the odd screech. You could hear the shags gurgling and coughing down on the lake just below. If you'd been blindfolded and dropped in there, you'd have thought you were in the wop-wops, because of the variability of the bird sound, and the sound of the wind, and branches in the trees and things like that.

And toward the end of the season, the Easter orchids. I remember that when the young falcon took its first flight, the Easter orchids were flowering, with that intense Christmas lily-like smell, just drifting through the whole forest.

What was your mood when you took that photo?
Excited and relaxed at the same time really, because even though by that stage the birds and I had got to know each other very well and they trusted me, the fact that they were still voluntarily coming so close and behaving quite normally, it always gave me a buzz.

I think also most bird photographers will tell you that sometimes when you push the shutter, you don't even need to look at the photograph on the screen of your camera. You know you've got a cracker photograph. "I don't even need to look at that. I'm going to go home and I'm going to love that photo. It's going to be a wow shot".

But also I found those visits into the valley very therapeutic. I had an incredibly stressful job. So those intimate hours were my therapy as well. They were places of peace. While I was watching the falcons, I wasn't thinking about work. Once you walked into that valley it was like you'd sealed off the outside world, and you could just focus on what was in front of you.

Why do you photograph birds?
To me, it is my connection with nature. One element is that hunter-collector type of emotion. You want to get a good bird shot, and when you know you've got one, I imagine that a hunter possibly feels a similar sort of way. You go "Yes! Got it!" you know. Especially if it's a rare bird, or one that you've not got before.

I love tramping and I do find it has many of the same benefits of bird photography. But tramping can't make me forget myself like birding does. That's the real difference. When I'm concentrating on finding and getting close to, earning the trust of a bird, and getting the right shot and all of those things, then everything else is temporarily forgotten.

Photographers have to get close to get that good shot. And that means knowing a lot more about the birds and their environment, and how they behave and what triggers their fear response. So you have to know those animals intimately, and use that knowledge to achieve your aim. There is an intensity to it.

Guy Vickers

Guy has 2 years' experience in bird photography as a serious pursuit, and 30 in other professional photography.

Special photo: Leucistic pīwakawaka (fantail), Taranaki.
Other Māori names for fantail.

Why did you choose this photo?
I had chosen the subject of ‘birds in flight’ as something I would do during lockdown. We have some ponds and river walkways in our area, and photographing birds in flight is very technical, so I wanted to train myself to do that. And then this white fantail appeared in our local park, and everyone said to me, “Oh you need to go and have a look for that white fantail”. I have done a lot of research on bird behaviour, and how you get close to them as a photographer. I decided that I would put more of that knowledge into practice.

I didn't have a big telephoto lens, so I had to get closer to the bird. And the only way to get closer was to understand its behaviour and understand the strategies that would allow me to get close. I had spent just under two weeks going down to the area and just sitting quietly and waiting, and wearing the same clothes and trying to become part of its environment without threatening it. That photograph was taken one afternoon when the light levels were very low. I was walking through the trees near the river and the bird came in and started feeding around me. It was the first time that it came in close and showed that trust. It was really magic, because all of the theories that I had learned and put into practice were finally paying off.

I grew up on a farm, and we had a lot of patches of native forest. We developed a liking of the natural world. And we saw a lot of changes too, a lot of habitat being destroyed. So I guess you could speculate that there were other, maybe non-human reasons why I ended up being the person to photograph the white fantail and befriend it. The Māori elder lady came and saw me, from the east coast of the North Island. She said that her belief is the fantail is the voice of the ancestors, and that I was chosen as the guardian of the bird because I was allowed to get close to it. So that was her theory, and I didn't grow up believing that but ... So there's a whole lot of other things that, I guess it depends what you believe in. If you look at it scientifically, the white fantail is only about 1 in 100,000, but there have been four or five seen in Taranaki over the last so many decades. So it's a combination of luck, hard work, a bit of knowledge and yeah, a few other things.

I would talk quietly to the bird every time it came in close. Every day I would say the same thing. The bird would come in close and feed, and I would say "Hi Whitey, how're you doing? What have you been up to?" and I would just make up stuff like "How's life in the forest?" and "Are there plenty of bugs around to eat at the moment?" and things like that. I just talked to it as if I was talking to a pet, you know. The voice is what built the trust the quickest of all the things. Every time I spoke to it, it would recognise me, and would come in close. It would flick around me. It was almost like a greeting for another bird. It would sit on a branch next to me, maybe 1–2 metres away, very quickly and then fly off and keep feeding. I always had that one chance, when it came in close. It was quite amazing.

Of all your photos from that time, what’s special to you about this one?
I guess the fact that the tail is fanned open, it was something that I was trying to achieve. Out of the couple of thousand photographs I took of that white bird, only two of them show the tail fully open. So there's a lot of chance involved with that one. The eye was in sharp focus, which is just extremely lucky, because they move so fast and their head's moving so fast, and it was low light in the forest with the lens nearly wide open. So I didn't have a lot of depth of field. Beautiful low light under an autumn copper beech tree. So the light was very warm and beautiful. It was just a magic moment really, spending that time with the bird. It was five minutes of the best experience of bird photography that I've ever had, just having the bird come in close around me, feeding and chirping. Just having that connection.

Why do you photograph birds?
I think for a lot of wildlife photographers, the magic is the connection with the animal they're photographing. It's a moment of appreciating what they're doing, that they're behaving naturally, and that we're not being seen and we're not a threat. You’re observing what they're doing, recording it for the beauty of the subject and for our own knowledge and technical challenge, and just being in the moment.

I have to spend a lot of time lying on the ground, crawling if it's coastal birds, or sitting in the forest quietly. We become more relaxed because it activates the parasympathetic nervous system, and we end up becoming more in tune with our surroundings. That's why I really enjoy it. I really enjoy connecting with nature through photography, and through hiking and climbing and trout fishing. That's the place I enjoy being the most. It's a magic time of the day when the sun's starting to drop and you can hear the birds chirping and a small stream next to me, all this beauty around me. It's a very relaxing, enjoyable moment.

Another reason is the technical challenge because landscapes are very easy, more or less. Birds move fast. They're often in low light and they often have bright colours with a dark background. So the exposure is difficult, getting the shutter speed fast enough to freeze their movement is difficult, and getting close to them is difficult. So photographically they're very very challenging. But when you get the good photographs, they're an incredibly beautiful subject and I love looking at all the detail of the feathers and trying to make artistic images out of the birds with their background.

It's my fascination with birds and the natural world is one part of it, but also the photographic challenge is the other.