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,
2/6/10:
After leaving this site dormant for nearly a year, I'm now updating it
with the photos I've taken during that period. See "The Backlog" and
"New Material" on the right for ongoing news of the update.]
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 I
was identifying as a birder, an activity I'd been pursuing since 1992.
After a while, I got more interested in the photography side,
and eventually I stopped doing the birder thing of keeping elaborate
records of birds seen and identified. In November 2003, I took the big
step in my decisive switch from birder to bird photographer when I
bought my first digital single-lens reflex camera.
Most of the images on the site, and all taken since November 2003, are DSLR photographs. I've been upgrading equipment and (I hope) improving my skills since then, and more of the pictures on this site are relatively recent. But I'll keep a so-so picture or an old digiscope if that's the best I've got for that species.
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) at my Pbase site, 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.
On the index pages, each species name links to an image page.
On the image 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 pages, there is commentary, 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 do a lot of my bird photography. 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 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. The picture below that is from the Moss Landing / Elkhorn Slough area. We often visit this birding mecca is on the Monterey County coast, a little more than an hour's drive away for us. Regular spots for my bird photography in Santa Clara County include Palo Alto Baylands Park, Shoreline Park in Mountain View, and the marshes of Alviso.
I also do bird photography at other spots in the Bay Area and nearby in Northern California. I sometimes take photo trips further afield, and many pictures here have come from those expeditions.
CONTACT. Feel free to download any of the pictures for your personal enjoyment. If you want to make any other use of them, please email me for permission here -- where comments and suggestions are also welcome.
397 species photographed in North America; 45 others elsewhere
The Backlog:
2/6/10: This website, moribund since March 2009, is alive
again! As a first step to incorporating photos taken over the last ten
months iuto the site, I've created pages for the fourteen new species
I've
photographed in North America during that period:
Trumpeter Swan
Gray Hawk
Golden Eagle
Rhinoceros Auklet
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
N'th'rn Beardless-Tyrannulet
Hammond's Flycatcher
Cordilleran Flycatcher
Dusky-capped Flycatcher
Plumbeous Vireo
Painted Redstart
Hepatic Tanager
Scott's Oriole
Purple Finch
2/8/10: I've just added pages for the eighteen new species I
photographed
in England on a trip in December 2009.
Black-headed Gull
Blue Tit
Carrion Crow
Cetti's Warbler
Chaffinch
Chiffchaff
Common Pochard
Eurasian Blackbird
Eurasian Coot
European Robin
Gray Heron
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Great Tit
Little Grebe
Long-tailed Tit
Song Thrush
Tufted Duck
Woodpigeon
I'll now begin gradually
incorporating the many photographs I've taken since March 2009 into
existing species pages, which I'll list here as they are updated.
New Material:
Of course I'm still out taking new pictures of birds whenever
I can, and I'll list under this heading the pages I create or upgrade
with new photographs going forward.
I'm giving priority to the backlog, so I'm likely to lag
behind in
incorporating new materials
into this site. You can always see my most recent bird pictures on my Pbase site, in the
"Latest"
gallery and any other galleries that appear in front of it.