It's been sometime since I've sat down to write a short story, just seems like so many things have prevented me from having the time to write.

I know the title, "Graveyard Birds", sounds a little on the morbid side, but I'm not talking about a place where birds are buried. I'm talking about a graveyard alive with the activity of birds flying about and feeding the many baby birds born there.

I'll have to admit - it had never crossed my mind to visit a graveyard to photograph birds until one day a friend, Robert Smith, told me about several pairs of nesting birds in a graveyard in downtown Greensboro. Robert asked me to join him the next morning to check out the graveyard birds. I won't go into what crossed my mind about photographing birds in a graveyard, but I was game to find out if life did exist in a graveyard.

I met him early the next morning at his house and loaded my gear into his truck. Robert stopped at some other places he wanted to show me before we headed to the graveyard. Our first stop was a nearby pond where we photographed water lilies and checked on a family of wood ducks, and a cardinal's nest. After an hour or so of taking photos of the water lilies and damselflies, we decided it was time to head to the graveyard.

Once we got to the graveyard, I learned that this particular graveyard was one of the oldest in the city with some of the tombstones dating back to the late 1700's and early 1800's. There were several confederate soldiers' graves complete with confederate flags. We stopped to check on a nest of Common Flickers and a tree with nesting Red-headed Woodpeckers. Across the paved drive from the woodpecker's nest, was a nest of Blue Jays and we could see Robins and Mockingbirds flying with food in their beaks most likely going to nests located somewhere in the graveyard. I was torn between reading the tombstones and photographing the birds. As it turned out, the flicker's hole had too many tree leaves surrounding it and making it difficult to get a decent photo of them. We watched the Redheaded woodpeckers for a while trying to determine if their babies had been born, and if so, how often they were feeding them. The woodpeckers were coming to their tree nest about every 20-30 minutes and it appeared they had food in their beaks and were indeed feeding the young.

By now the light was not good for photographing, so we headed back to Robert's house. We decided to meet around 5 pm that afternoon at the graveyard and see if we could get a few photos of the Red-headed woodpeckers with the afternoon sun hitting them and their nesting hole.

Robert had an excellent resource book with him entitled The Birders Handbook: "A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds". The section of the book on Red-headed Woodpeckers told us that they like to nest from 8-80 feet up in a cavity excavated by the male and female where the female will lay 4-5 eggs. Normally both the male and female share in the incubation of the eggs, which takes about 12-13 days. Once hatched the young will stay in the nest for 27-30 days while both the male and female feed them. We didn't know when the baby birds were born, but figured we had only a week or so to get photos of the nesting birds.

In order to get both flight and stationary photos of the woodpeckers, I set up two cameras - one with remote control for flight shots and the other by my side for stationary photos of the woodpeckers or other birds that would come in close. The remote control camera was equipped with a telephoto lens, in this case a 200-400 lens on a D3 body and a SB-800 flash unit with a "Walt Anderson" better beamer. Depending on where I sat the remote camera in relationship to the nest determined if I used the 1.4 or 1.7 tele-converter with the lens or no converter. I set the D3 on manual with a shutter speed of 500 to 1000 of a second, set the f-stop to F11 or 16 and bumped the ISO up to 1200 to 1600, depending on the amount of light. With the high shutter speed, I hoped to be able to stop the action of the woodpeckers as they flew in to feed the babies at the nesting hole. If I had left the camera set on aperture priority, my normal mode, I would not have been able to control both the shutter speed and aperture of the lens (depth of field) for the birds. I pre-focused the area where I was hoping to capture the bird's flight and then took the lens off the auto focus setting and put it on manual. This would keep the lens from trying to refocus while taking the photos. This was important since I was taking in a broad area of the flight pattern of the woodpeckers and did not want the lens to refocus. I also set the camera on continuous shutter release (CL) so the camera would give me a burst of images rather than one image.

The camera by my side, or on a tripod, was a D300 with a 2x and 70-200 VR lens and SB-800 flash unit equipped with the better beamer. This turned out to be a really good combination; giving me around 600 mm of reach and sharp images. I kept this camera on aperture priority with ISO settings between 200 and 800 depending on the amount of available light. As it turned out, I used this set up not only to photograph the woodpeckers, but also a Brown Thrasher, Mockingbird, and some hawks in the graveyard.

Robert used his 600 mm lens with a 2x converter, SB800 flash with better beamer and his D3 camera. He likes to get up close and personal with his subjects and got some great close-up shots of the woodpeckers.

Photographing birds can sometimes test your patience. I've photographed a lot of birds over the years, but this was the first time I'd photographed nesting Redheaded woodpeckers. During a two-hour period, the woodpeckers would only bring food to the babies 4 or 5 times, if we were lucky! I had been used to photographing songbirds that would come every few minutes to feed and tend to their young. Robert and I talked about how long the wait time was between feedings. Many times the woodpeckers would come back to the nesting tree or a nearby tree but would not have any food for the young.

As nature photographers, we need to have the patience of Job and then hope that all the time we spent waiting for that special moment pays off with just the right shot. Hopefully with a little luck, knowing something about our subject, and lots of planning and practice, we'll get the photo we have envisioned as we watch nature at work. Many times things just don't come together like we've planned, but even after all the trials and errors, any day in the field photographing is better than _____ ! I'll let you fill in the blank.

Thanks to the tip from my friend, Robert, it's now difficult to pass by a graveyard that has lots of trees and not ride through and check it out. Most towns will have one or two. If you've not checked out your local graveyard you might want to plan to do that, who knows you might just see me there too.

Have a great time photographing and sharing your images, and while you're at it, try to teach a child about the great outdoors.

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