I’ve only just started going to Yellowstone and have been loving it. I know I am late to the party, but when I was a kid and then once more as an adult, I found the traffic was simply unbearable and photography was almost impossible. Traveling the park in winter and even early spring fixed that problem, no people! Of course, things are also more difficult as roads are closed or you need specialized vehicles to get around. The other thing that you need is patience, and focus. Well when don’t you need those things for bird photography?
At Yellowstone the thing that I found was everyone is so busy looking for big game like bison and bear, the wee birds often go unseen. Several times I caused an inadvertent “bird jam” as people were stopping in traffic to see what I was photographing, most left disgusted! I found that by simply ignoring things that were more than a foot tall helped. The other “trick” was to use every pullout along the road and look around to see what might be flittering by. Lastly the area around Old Faithful had quite a lot of birds and they were a bit more tolerant of people stopping to take a few pictures.
You can see all of my bird photography…HERE.
The park boasts 330 documented bird species, here are 9 of mine! Guess I need a lot more patience and focus!
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In case you are visiting the park, here is a map showing where I made the images.
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