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For many years I have been looking for a good spot to photograph hawfinches. They are quite common in Holland but not easy to photograph because they are very shy at first. The first thing to do is feed them with good quality sunflower seeds; the seeds with the most oil are their favourite. It can take a while for them to trust the setup and the food but I learned that they can turn very tame after a week or so. I fed them small portions every day so they knew I was the one who puts down the food for them. After two weeks I didn’t even have to use the hide anymore and up to 9 hawfinches turned up every morning and afternoon.

A bird is a bird but a perch is a perch…

What I mean is that although a hawfinch is a beautiful bird….it’s the perch which makes the image ‘perfect’  A beautiful bird on an ugly stick is nice but it doesn’t make it a great image. Before I start a new project, I spend a lot of time looking for the perfect background and perch. In this case I asked a friend to bring some nice lichen covered perches from Switzerland. The background is a camouflage netting with matching colours, so the colours of the background include the colours of the bird and perch.

This way a nice image turns into a little piece of art which matches my (sometimes frustrating) standards.

Hawfinches can be very vicious when it comes to food and I saw them fight many times. After a nightly brain session in bed I figured out how to capture this behaviour and the next morning I gave it a go. By placing the food on one side of the perch, only one bird could feed. Another bird then sat next to him and………bingo!!!  A very quick and nasty fight over food was the result.

Male hawfinches fought each other but they didn’t fight the female or juvenile. Instead they just opened their beak but quickly gave up and flew off.

It all went so quickly but thanks to the fast Nikon D4 and higher iso, I managed to get some good full frame shots of this wonderful bird.

Edwin Kats