What's in your feeder?, originally uploaded by Nashua Telegraph.

I have photographed many kinds of birds in my 20-plus years as a
photojournalist, but capturing their songs was a whole new experience
for me.

As multimedia producers for www.nashuatelegraph.com, we often use
wireless microphones pinned to the lapel of our subject during an
interview. But how do I pin one on a woodpecker flying in and out of the
birdfeeders this week at the Audubon Center in Auburn? My first attempt
at capturing its conversation with the chickadees and a nuthatch
involved clipping the tiny microphone to the wire mesh on a sunflower
seed feeder. But would the birds peck at it, or leave a surprise for me
to clean off later? The birds didn't bother it, but the contraption
wasn't close enough to pick up their voices. That's so strange because I
could hear them clear across the field.

Next I tried setting the video camera without the radio microphone in a
snow bank below the feeders, not only to warm up inside the Audubon
Center, but to let the birds return without me standing as a predator to
them. That didn't work for sound either, as the microphone on the video
camera didn't pick up well.

So, after dusting the snow off the bottom of the camera (don't tell my
boss), I attached a shotgun mic to the video camera from my audio kit.
Now, it's not a 12-gauge, but it certainly can give me a lot of sound.
The long microphone picks up sound coming from a single direction.
That's how I captured the sounds of a large woodpecker hundreds of yards
away in a tree. He was now the bass, and the other birds were the
sopranos. But I still don't know what the screech was coming from a barn
in the neighbor's yard.

If you are interested in counting birds, there is a Great Backyard Bird
Count started today across the country. You can find out more
information at www.birdsource.org/gbbc. There are also more still
photographs of birds in a Mycapture gallery on our website, as well as
the Backyard birds video on the Audio/Video page.

-Bob Hammerstrom