Happy Sunday! Arcata Marsh has two things in common with all my favorite birding and bird photography spots: abundance of birds (which includes a variety of species AND great numbers of at least some of the species), and access (ease of getting close to the birds). In these respects Arcata is just like Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico, the Cape May New Jersey hot-spots in spring and fall, Viera Wetlands and Merritt Island NWR in Florida, the Magee Marsh boardwalk in OH during migration, and Edinburg Wetlands and Estero LLano Grande World Birding Centers in the Rio Grande valley of Texas. Now, in all other ways those destinations are about as dissimilar as any set you could name…certainly the mix of habits and species is spectacularly broad…but all of these locations the offer the combination of abundance and access that makes them my top picks for birding and photography. (I could expand the list, of course, but those are the places I get to at least once a year, most years.)

And of course, part of what make abundance and access so attractive to the photographer is that is simply increases your chances of getting the shots that really satisfy. You are surrounded by opportunity. You shoot a lot. It is just way more likely that some of those images will have that little something extra that raises them above the ordinary bird portrait.

This shot of a Song Sparrow deep in the cat-tail reeds does it for me. I love the lines and textures of the reeds, the crisscrossing patterns of hard geometric shapes in contrast to the living bird. I really like the play of focus receding to the bird. I like the composition…with the bird high and centered, and looking left. And the green bokeh behind pulls the whole thing together for me. Even the dull, but well defused shadowless light, contributes to the effectiveness of the image. That is what I see when I think about it…but really I just like the way the image looks!

Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1240mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical plus 1.5x digital tel-extender). f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.

And to build out from that for the Sunday thought: abundance and access make bird photography easier, certainly, but that is never all there is to it. I used terms like “way more likely” and “increases your chances” because that is how we think of it, but of course it is not really a matter of chance at all. Without an attentive eye, developed over years in the field with your camera in your hand, an nurtured by many many visits to places like Arcata Marsh, you can just as easily come away from even a place with abundance and access without that memorable shot. Most people do.

And don’t think I am boasting here. No one is more surprised by an image like the one of the Song Sparrow in the reeds than I am. When I first saw it on my computer monitor while editing images, my thought was, “great image” not “well done.” I hesitate to take any credit for it at all. It is as though the spirit of the sparrow, and the creative spirit that is all in all, touched the creative spirit in me and the image just happened. I can only sit back and applaud. I am totally delighted at the gift.

That does not mean I don’t know that gifts like this come much more often in places like Arcata Marsh!