Photographing dark colored birds

I love the slate colored dark eyed junco. It's a winter bird to the US, coming down from Canada to spend the cold months with us. They like to hang out low to the ground, hopping around and looking for food. Their perky mannerisms can warm even the coldest day.

This is my first winter watching the dark eyed juncos, and I've wanted to get a nice photo of one of these snowbirds. It's been a challenge. They have dark gray to black feathers on the upper half of their body, and white feathers below. For some reason, in most of my previous shots, their dark feathers came out noisy and lacking detail. I think it's due to the fact that the lower half of the tree in my yard, where they like to hang out, is usually in the shade, so that plus the winter light makes for low shutter speeds, and I just couldn't get enough light into the camera. Plus, I usually am shooting through the glass of my windows, degrading the quality of the shot.

This time, I opened the window up to shoot. It was chilly but I finally got a decent shot of my snowbirds!



I think the main keys were good lighting and shooting unobstructed.