About

Update for 2018: Five years have passed since starting this blog, and though it isn’t updated as often, I’ve enjoyed nature photography all the more with my retired husband sharing the passion, and a newer camera body, the Canon 7D Mark II.  We’ve traveled the US and Costa Rica filling up a 6Tb hard drive twice!  More photos can be seen at BirdingPictures.smugmug.com

(2013) Laden down with ALL my cameras!  Didn’t want to miss anything at this famous bridge in Big Sur!  iPhone, Lumix, Canon 7D with 400mm lens.  (Don’t try this yourself.  Everything gets tangled up!)

Birding has been my passion for almost 30 years, but adding the camera to the hobby has jump-started my passion all over again.  I can never get enough of capturing the details, the colors, and behavior of these awesome creatures.  By getting out every day, I’ve always found something interesting to capture, and benefited by the experience.  I believe in always growing, and am presently taking a course in Lightroom editing which will help me organize my almost 300,000(!) pictures and to be able to edit in RAW.

At the beginning, I started out with a Sony camera  with a 15X zoom, but about 5 years ago I sprang for the real thing:  a Canon EOS 50D with a fixed 400mm lens.  When it wore out in the middle of a birding trip to Texas, I upgraded to a Canon 7D and have been thrilled with the results.  I still use a zoom camera, the Lumix pictured here, for landscapes and macro, and now use compact Leica binoculars which work better with my heavy camera.

With the help and encouragement of my son, an internet marketing graduate,  I started this blog in order to share my love of nature, especially birds, with the hope that others would see the order and beauty that God has created for our pleasure.   My teaching experience also gives me the desire to teach others some basics about these intricate creatures.  By doing some research for some of the posts, I am learning some new things myself!

I hope that these blog posts will inspire you to get out of the house with some binoculars, watch for movement, and be amazed at what you will see!  I would love to hear your comments on what you are observing and learning from the birds, as well.

Happy Birding!

Lauri Shaffer

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God,

But only he who sees takes off his shoes;

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning*