Photographing “Little Brown Jobs” – The Beauty of Less-Loved Birds

Open any bird guide, from any country or region, and you’ll quickly notice that most birds are, well… brown. Some might even call their appearance boring. But I disagree. Personally, I have a soft spot for what we in the Czech Republic call “the universal brown birds.” In English-speaking countries, birders typically refer to them as “little brown jobs.” Their plumage may not dazzle with a kaleidoscope of colors, but that doesn’t make them bad subjects for photographers. In this article, I’d like to show you that even birds dressed in fifty shades of brown can make for striking photos.

The inspiration for this piece came on a beautiful morning in the rolling, steppe-like landscape of Spain’s Extremadura. In summer, this land is rocky and bone-dry. But in spring, before the sun burns everything to dust, the meadows and pastures burst into bloom, painting the countryside with thousands of yellow, white, and blue wildflowers. And if you stop to listen, the spring breeze carries the scratchy song of the Corn Bunting and the melodic whistles of the Crested Lark.

Both species also live in my home country, the Czech Republic. So naturally, I first aimed my lens at other birds that were more exotic to me. But I couldn’t resist. Ignoring them would have been a crime – they’re simply too beautiful.

I started with the Corn Bunting, which seemed an easier target than the Crested Lark. Male Corn Buntings like to perch on fences, tall plants, or shrubs, singing their songs across the landscape. In my experience, they aren’t particularly shy. My goal was to capture one in the middle of a song, when you can see its characteristic beak wide open. Just as with human singers, a bird’s emotions seep into its performance – an important ingredient in both human and wildlife photography.

The male I’d chosen to photograph was perched on a shrub about three meters high. He didn’t fly away when I approached, which was a promising start. I managed to take a few shots of him on his original “stage,” but I wanted to capture him a little closer to the ground for a better composition – something with more depth and color. He began hopping from one perch to another, choosing even better spots than I had in mind, as if he knew exactly what my intention was. Rarely does one encounter a creature so willing to cooperate.

There was plenty of light to work with, so I could safely keep my shutter speed fast. I shot handheld, contorting myself into yogi-like poses just above the ground. The idea was to position the camera high enough to avoid any distracting vegetation between me and the bird, while staying low enough to get a distant, creamy background.

The position of the camera relative to the subject and background is often far more important for good bokeh than the aperture of the lens itself (as Spencer explains in his article Bokeh Is Less About Your Lens, More About You). Although I was using a 500mm f/4 here, I shot it with a 1.4x teleconverter at an aperture of f/6.3. You could achieve similar subject separation with a relatively inexpensive 180-600mm zoom.

My heart was pounding as I watched the scene unfold in my viewfinder. When I felt I had “the shot,” I didn’t forget to record a few short video clips as well. Moving images with live birdsong can add a wonderful extra dimension to a scene. The entire shoot, from first frame to last, took 14 minutes. I quietly thanked the Bunting for his time and cooperation and headed out in search of a Crested Lark.

As it turned out, my early assumption about the two species was correct. Every single Lark I encountered was the exact opposite of the obliging Bunting. It was as if they knew exactly what I wanted them to do, and then did the complete opposite! They’d perch on ugly fence wires along the roads and displayed an uncanny knack for taking off a split second before I could press the shutter.

I nearly admitted defeat when, a few meters from my car, I spotted one perched on the fence of a nearby pasture. He seemed utterly indifferent to my car and its driver. I carefully reached for my camera in the back seat, raised it, and – nothing happened. The Lark stayed put for a few seconds, then dropped down among the clumps of soil by the roadside.

One foot on the clutch, the other on the gas, camera raised to my eye… I felt like a clumsy, sluggish, modern version of a warrior on horseback. Birds often scare off the moment something unexpected appears in a car window, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.

The recipe for success was essentially the same as with the Bunting: a low angle for a clean foreground and background, an interesting pose, and with a bit of luck, some action. Finally, the Lark hopped onto a clump of ground and started to sing.

But there was one key difference compared to the Bunting – and it was a big one. The Lark had chosen the most visually uninspiring spot imaginable. The only color in this bumpy, disordered roadside was brown, in various shades of saturation. But thanks to the telephoto lens and low angle, I was able to smooth out most of the scene’s distracting background.

Then the biologist in me took over. After all, photographs should reflect the natural history of a species. And the Crested Lark is – or rather was – a typical bird of agricultural landscapes. Its brown coloration works brilliantly in such an environment of stones and soil. From that moment on, I aimed to photograph him against a background as uniform in color as possible.

In the photo below, the resulting palette would be almost identical to what you’d get by converting the photo to black and white and then toning it sepia. A brown background that suits the beauty of this little brown bird! And it tells a bit of a story of how well the Crested Lark blends into its surroundings. Those whose feathers don’t match their surroundings usually die young.

Takeaways

• If it’s brown – let it shine! When a bird’s colors seem too plain or dull, try photographing it against a dull background so that its understated beauty can stand out.
• If it’s brown – let it be brown! Bird plumage patterns are driven by two main pressures. On one hand, birds influenced by sexual selection tend to be colorful. On the other hand, those needing to blend into their surroundings (as anti-predator strategy) often sport duller, unremarkable colors. Don’t be afraid to emphasize this connection between plumage and habitat in your photographs.
• Foreground and background matter. Even if the animal takes up a significant portion of your image, it is still often less than half the pixels in your image. Make sure the rest of the frame is visually appealing too. For ground-dwelling birds, kneeling or lying flat helps push the background far behind them for better separation.
• A little action, please. A bird perched motionless on a branch or the ground might make a fine field guide illustration, but a bit of action brings life and energy to your photo. Capture birds singing, stretching, feeding, or interacting with others, and both the aesthetic and informational value of your shot will often rise.
• Light, light, light! Light shapes a photograph not only technically, but also aesthetically. Pay attention to its color, intensity, and direction. A tiny spark of reflected light in a bird’s eye might cover only a few pixels, but it holds immense visual power. Without it, the eye is just a black hole.