It can be difficult to photograph birds buried in branches, especially smaller subjects that don’t give us much of an auto-focus target.

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If we can develop an easy-to-use technique, not only can we photograph birds perched and buried in branches, but we can also capture them taking flight from obscured positions.

A good example is the Eastern Rosella in the next four frames.

You can see the bird is visually obscured by some branches and buds. There was a small portion of the rosella’s flank that was exposed enough for me to place a single, small auto-focus point on it.

The image above captures the rosella five frames later as it took flight from the obscured position.

Then, six frames later the rosella is captured in mid-air as it is taking full flight.

The photograph above is the last one in my fifteen frame Pro Capture H run, shot at 60 frames-per-second. My Pre-Shutter Frames and Frame Limiter were both set to 15. This gave me a 1/4 second of shutter release response time.

These Eastern Rosella images illustrate a very easy-to-use technique that can consistently produce interesting images of small birds taking flight from obscured positions.

Obviously step 1 is to find a bird buried in branches.

Step 2 is to place a single, small auto-focus point on any part of the bird’s body that is visible through the branches.

Step 3 is to anticipate the direction that the bird will move as it takes flight, or hops to another position. Birds will typically fly towards an open area, and they will signal that movement direction by where their beak is pointing.

Step 4 is timing your shutter release to coincide with the action that you want to photograph. If your camera has Pro Capture H technology (or something similar in other brands of camera) you can spool images into temporary memory by half depressing your shutter release… then fully depress your shutter release when the bird has completed the action you wanted to capture.

When photographing birds buried in branches I always use single auto-focus… with one, small auto-focus point. I find this is much more reliable than using continuous auto-focus, and risking my camera inadvertently focusing on branches in front of the subject bird as it reacquires auto-focus between each frame.

Everyone has their preferred compositional approach. I like capturing birds buried in branches as it adds more environmental context and realism to my images.

I typically photograph birds buried in branches that are flitting or hopping between branches. Using a fast frame rate helps me capture at least some frames with unobstructed views of a subject bird’s head.

Even short distance hops can often yield very interesting body positions.

Photographing small birds in amongst branches and twigs does complicate the image capture approach. And… that makes it more challenging and fun.

Often I have to slowly approach birds buried in branches, and position myself at the precise spot where I can shoot through all kinds of obstructions in the foreground in order to capture my images.

Compared to many other photographers I probably spend a lot more time standing in close to trees waiting for small birds to arrive, and provide me with interesting image opportunities. This technique can also be used to capture butterflies taking flight when perched in amongst branches, twigs and blossoms.

To me, a bird in the bush is worth two in the hand.

Technical Note

Photographs were captured handheld using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. All images were created from RAW files using my standard process in post. This is the 1,506 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.

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