Journal - Using a trail camera for bird photography

Yeah, I am digressing from hydroponic gardening with this post, however, I thought I would share a technique that I recently tried.  The technique is to capture wild birds without much effort on the photographer's part using a trail camera, sort of letting them take selfies.

Oh, and yeah, I have a few hydroponic projects going on, but the olive trees are taking up so much room in the basement I am very limited.

On to bird photography, another pastime to occupy my retirement hours.  Instead of sitting outside freezing my butt off in the cold I decided to use my Stealthcam trail camera to photograph birds, automatically.

In order to accomplish this I purchased an inexpensive set of close up lenses on eBay.  As I recall they were about twenty dollars, delivered. 

In order to have a natural looking environment I scoured the woods looking for a tree stump that I could cut a depression in to hold something to attact the birds.  Next, using one of Ava's elastic hair bands, I attached a close up lens to my trail camera and set if  for photos.

After a few days of using the stump to feed the birds I found that they would feed from it even though I was moving it around the property trying to select the right background.

For the photos I found that a #2 lens at a distance of 20" gives excellent results, but you should experiment if you decide to try this.

Below are photos of my setup and results.