I’ve posted here a few times about Long Tailed Tits and my attempts to photograph them.  They are tiny birds (body about 6cm max with a 9cm tail) that have fascinating behaviours like congregating and raising young in family groups.  They also build the most elaborate and beautiful little nests made up of lichen and moss bound together with hair and silk from spider’s webs and cocoons, the inside of the nest being lined with hundreds of feathers.  The nests appear to be rather elastic as you can see them bulge as the young move about at the approach of the adults.   

For several years, I have been wanting to take a particular photo of these birds at their nest.  I found a number of nests in the past but this year I spotted one ‘under construction’ about 6 weeks age.  After a lot of periodic observations and a trial run a week ago, I had another go over the last weekend.  This time the birds were in a focused feeding mode and I was able to get the photo I’d long ‘visualised’.  Particularly the one below but you can see some more on the Long Tailed Tit gallery page here.

Gear: Nikon Z6 with 24-70 f/4 lens at 50mm.  Exposure, 1/200s (flash sync speed), f/18, ISO 800 with balanced fill flash (2 flashes - Nikon SB-28 on manual at 1/16 & 1/32 power).  The Z6 camera and lens is very quiet in operation and much quieter than my DSLRs.  As this photo was taken at an active nest site, extreme care was taken not to disturb the birds. Gear was camouflaged and moved into place incrementally over some hours and was later removed in the same way without revealing the nest.  It was impossible to look through the viewfinder due to the camera position in a gorse bush.  Consequently, framing, pre-focusing and exposure settings were made with Nikon’s wireless ‘SnapBridge’ phone app that allows a wireless ‘live view’ with camera controls.  This approach, though complicated, minimises disturbance as you can spend the very little time at the nest itself and that reduces the chance of the parents returning while you are near the nest.  However, that’s not responsive enough for accurate shutter firing so a radio release and flash triggering system from Yongnuo (RF603ii) system was used with a, somewhat obscured, visual view through binoculars at a distance.   Again, to minimise disturbance, I’d practiced this setup at home so that I could do it reliably and quickly on site.  

I’d emphasise that, when doing this sort of photography, it is completely unacceptable to disturb the bird’s feeding/rearing routine.  It might be obvious but apart from the ethical point, disturb your subjects and you won’t get any photos - duh!  Working gradually and checking they are not alerted at each step is essential.  To do this means you must be familiar with their routine, flightpaths and approach and sometimes alarm call.  One of the key parts in preparing to shoot the camera is hearing the birds approach calls as they fly to the nest or approach from nearby branches/bushes - its fascinating to see the young gape as they hear the parent’s calls.  It’s fascinating and you get to learn a great deal about your subjects.  It is also critical never to trim foliage out of the way to give a better camera view.  That presents a very real risk of exposing the nest to predation; about 50% of these tit nests fail this way.  Finally, please, don’t approach any nests when the birds are incubating eggs, that’s when they are most likely to abandon it; wait until you can see them busy feeding young and always ensure you understand their food collecting patterns and then watch them (both) leave the nest before approaching.