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Charlie A. Sindiong | profile | all galleries >> Birds of the Phlippines >> A Tail To Tell tree view | thumbnails | slideshow

A Tail To Tell







Nesting is the most critical time in a life of a bird. The interference we make can easily harm the birds.
Even the most seasoned outdoor photographers follow the ethical standards and do the documentation with utmost care.
One very basic ethic the photographer must observe is to work outside the tolerance zone to avoid any possible interference.
Any anxiety caused to the bird could mean abandonment of the nest, resulting in unincubated eggs or the nestling will simply die of starvation.
Another standard is, since a nest is strategically made by the parent bird/s, trimming of branches
or cutting of leaves to make a clear line of sight could make the nest vulnerable to predators or the unfeathered nestling could be burnt by the sunlight.
That is why photographing nesting birds is not encouraged and left only to the expert nature photographer with sufficient avian background and with proper equipment.

Even though I had watched birds since my childhood days, I am not much of an expert on these wonderful creatures.
I do not have the best of equipment, too. I was just lucky that a resident pair of Pied Fantail in our compound made its nest just 4 meters from our garage
and equidistant to my office. I got the chance to solely document the nestling for 8 consecutive days.
That's from the time the baby is approximately 4 days old until its first flight.

I established a birdhide in our garage and mounted my camera in a platform that leveled with the elevation of the nest.
I operated the camera wirelessly from my office but i found wired trigger to be more effective and educating.

On April 10 2016, my 8th day of the documentary and just after my first series of shots for the day,
I was rattled when i could not see the fledgling on the nest!
I thought there was an attack from a predator (bird of prey or by a cat).
But to my surprise, the juvenile bird has just made its very first flight away from the nest and into a much bigger world.

As i'm writing this, I could hear the birdies' calls along with the other birds in our compound.
The sound is so familiar. They are the calls I often heard the past week. They are from of a hungry young and the very responsive pair of Pied Fantail.


CAS10Apr2016
Day 1 of documentation
Day 1 of documentation		 Day 2 of documentation
Day 2 of documentation		 Day 3 of documentation
Day 3 of documentation
Day 4 of documentation
Day 4 of documentation		 Day 5 of documentation
Day 5 of documentation		 Day 6 of documentation
Day 6 of documentation
Day 7 of documentation
Day 7 of documentation		 Day 8 of documentation
Day 8 of documentation		 After the first flight
After the first flight

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