TO THE BIRDS:
Alphabetical index
Taxonomic index: Nonpasserines
Taxonomic index: Passerines
World bird index

A selection from my photographs, arranged in gallery form on my Pbase site.

Technical stuff for anyone interested in equipment and techniques.

Links to some birding, bird photo, and digiscoping sites that I've enjoyed.

Tom Grey's Bird Pictures

[Note: After leaving this site dormant for nearly a year, in January 2010 I began updating it with the photos I'd taken during that period. See "Recent Additions" on the right for update news.] *

I'm Tom Grey, a bird photographer living on the Stanford campus near Palo Alto in the San Francisco Bay Area. This site is my illustrated bird list, showing the species I've photographed since I took up the hobby in 2002.

I got into bird photography by starting to digiscope birds to help me identify them as part of my birding hobby, which I'd been pursuing for a decade or so. I found I was more and more interested in the photography side, and less involved with keeping records of birds seen and identified. An important step in the transition from birder who takes pictures to bird photographer came in November 2003, when I bought my first digital single-lens reflex camera.

I've been upgrading equipment and I hope improving my skills ever since, so more of the pictures on this site are relatively recent. But I'll keep an image that isn't so hot technically or artistically, if it's the best I've got for that species -- the remnant, I guess, of my birder's listing mania.

For some technical stuff about my photography (and a bit on digiscoping) look here. For those whose main interest is the photography side, I have a separate bird photography gallery (with lots of the same pictures as on this one) on the photo-sharing site PBase, where technical data on photos can be found. From that site here is a page of my pictorial favorites.

FORMAT. The pictures here are displayed on image pages, one for each bird species. The species photographed in North America are listed on three index pages, one alphabetical and two (for songbirds and other birds) in taxonomic order. Species photographed only outside North America are listed on the World bird index. When I have photographs of a species both from North America and elsewhere, the latter are included on the North American species pages, with a label showing the location.

The four index pages have links to species pages, with pictures of birds of that species. On the species pages, passing your cursor over a picture gives basic information: species, and where and when the picture was taken. Places are in Santa Clara County, California  unless another California county or another state or country is given.

On many species pages, there is text, including discussion of identification issues. (I invite comments and especially corrections; I'm an enthusiastic birder, but no great expert.) My maximum size for web images started at 640 x 480, and is now 1000 x 800. I'm gradually upgrading old images to the larger web display size, but many smaller ones remain.

PHOTOGRAHY VENUES. The pictures on this page show some places where I photograph birds. Two of these, pictured left, are on the Stanford campus. where we live and work. ("We" includes Barbara Babcock, who often notices birds that I miss.) Top left is our backyard garden, and below that is a picture of Frenchman's Park, a short walk from our house.

On the top right is a view of Arastradero Preserve, a natural area in the Santa Cruz Mountain foothills only a short drive from my house, with a stream, lake, and characteristic California oak savannah habitat. The picture below that is from the Moss Landing / Elkhorn Slough area. We often visit this birding mecca on the Monterey County coast, a little more than an hour's drive away for us. Some of my regular spots for bird photography in Santa Clara County include Palo Alto Baylands Park, Shoreline Park in Mountain View, and the marshes of Alviso.

I take pictures of birds at other spots in the Bay Area and nearby in Northern California. I also bring photo equipment on  trips further afield, and many pictures here have come from those expeditions.

*This website was originally built on Geocities with PageBuilder, a web editor specific to that platform. PageBuilder died when Yahoo dumped Geocities, and I looked for a dummy-proof editor with which to continue the site. I finally settled on Seamonkey. In building new and revised species pages with Seamonkey here, I have duplicated the format I used on the old Geocities site, with the single distinguishing exception that the species name heading of the new pages is in bold. Thanks to Joe Neto for helping me save the work I'd put into the site, and to Devon Cattell for introducing me to Seamonkey.

Favorites

399 species photographed in North America; 45 others elsewhere

Last update: 3/8/10

RECENT ADDITIONS:

This website, moribund from March 2009 to January 2010, is alive again! I've posted pages for the sixteen new species I photographed in North America during that period:

Trumpeter Swan
Gray Hawk
Golden Eagle
Rhinoceros Auklet
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
N. Beardless-Tyrannulet
Hammond's Flycatcher
Cordilleran Flycatcher
Dusky-capped Flycatcher
Great Crested Flycatcher
Plumbeous Vireo
Painted Redstart
Hepatic Tanager
Scott's Oriole
Purple Finch

I also added pages, all those labeled "UK" on the World Bird index, for the eighteen new species I photographed in England in December 2009.

And I'm gradually updating existing pages with photographs taken during 2009, and also with new photographs. Pages updated so far in 2010 are:

Swainson's Hawk
American Kestrel
Virginia Rail
Great Horned Owl
Black-chinned Hummingbird
Williamson's Sapsucker
Arizona Woodpecker
Olive-sided Flycatcher
Vermilion Flycatcher
Bell's Vireo
Cassin's Vireo
Bridled Titmouse
Pygmy Nuthatch
Cactus Wren
Black-throated Gray Warbler
MacGillivray's Warbler
Western Tanager
Green-tailed Towhee
Canyon Towhee
Abert's Towhee
Rufous-crowned Sparrow
Lark Sparrow
Black-throated Sparrow
Lark Bunting
Northern Cardinal
Pyrrhuloxia
Hooded Oriole


For more of my new pictures, see the "Latest" gallery at my Pbase site, plus any other galleries that appear in front of it.