In this behind‑the‑scenes video, Angie Birmingham (Speaker A) walks viewers through the complete setup of two blinds for the upcoming PPA Spring Workshop: a large raptor blind and a smaller bird blind at a pond. She explains how the site was chosen to balance background blur (bokeh) and proximity to raptors, discusses lighting considerations (morning illumination of sticks, avoiding back‑lighting), and details the equipment used—a 12 ft × 6 ft pop‑up blind that can accommodate three photographers and two instructors. The blind is modified with a black cloth to block shadows, anchored with dirt piles to deter snakes, and surrounded by dead twigs, hog carcasses, and perch sticks to attract raptors. The bird blind is positioned at a scenic Texas pond, intended for shooting birds, raccoons, deer, hogs, and even bobcats. The crew deals with incoming weather, weeds the island, builds a padded platform, and installs mosquito repellent. The video ends with both blinds fully set up, ready for the workshop, and a brief recap of logistics and safety measures.
Chapters
So today we are out setting up a raptor blind and a bird blind for our upcoming PPA spring workshop. So let me show you what we're doing. Right now we got the skid steer out here Doing a little mowing, trying to figure out exactly where to put the blind so we can get that nice blurred background, but yet not too close to the raptors so they'll get spooked. So here's the location that we chose. We'll set up some dead twigs and, uh, Put some dead hogs there come Saturday— well, Friday night— and we'll have some raptors. All right, I gotta get out of the way because he is going to shred our little area. We'll come back and take a look at it and see what it looks like here in a minute. So our thought process behind setting up the raptor blind where we have it is that we want The sticks to be illuminated by the morning light, and they also need to be far enough away from the tree line back there so that we get nice compression and we get good depth of field so the background is nice and blurry, as people call it, bokeh. And the blind itself, we've got to put it in trees so that we are shaded, so it does not bring attention to us. Because if we are backlit, we will have shadows in the blind and we don't want that. The blind that we're going to set up over here is a pop-up blind, and the pop-up blind is 12 feet by 6 feet, so it will house many photographers. We'll have 3 photographers and 2 instructors. And the reason we're gonna have 2 instructors is so that we can split up. If somebody doesn't want to go to the raptor blind or such, they can go to the bird blind because the bird blind is set up for morning or evening shooting and it's at a pond. We'll go visit that one next, but let's check out and see what Jeff's working on over here. Sounds like he's working pretty hard, or at least his— So we got a little tree trimming to do. They're hanging down a little too low. Jeff's going to grab the shredder and shred that away. I'm going to go ahead and get the Kind of figured that tree might be in the way as the birds fly in, and it's just weasatch anyways. It's an invasive species, needs to go. All right, now I'm gonna go grab the blind and we're gonna get it set up. All right, here we go. We got the blind set up. It's quite big. Go to wide angle. There you go. And it is a see-through blind, 360, but I'm not a fan of the 360. So I put a black cloth up on a majority of it because otherwise you can see shadows through the blind. All right, here we go. Got it all anchored down. Got dirt all up against the edges. I don't know how other people do it in other parts of the country, but here we pile dirt up all the way around the blind to keep those slithering snakes out of the blind. So Let's go over here, see what so far we've got. Got a dead tree right there. We'll put the dead hogs for bait behind it, and we're gonna see if we can't round up some more little snaggletooth limbs for those birds to land on that they love so much. Oh, here comes some now. There we go. We got some perfect sticks for some raptors. Now all we need is a carcass. All right, raptor blind is done. Now we're going to move on over to the most beautiful pond on the lake. Where we're gonna set up the blind for birds, raccoons, deer, hogs, maybe even a bobcat. You never know. All right, let's go. So we got some weather coming in. We gotta hurry up and get to the other blind location and hopefully get it set up before we get rained on. Wish us luck. Here is, in my opinion, the best little pond in Texas. It's like I need to weed eat the island. But look at this place. Wildlife paradise. When I pulled up here, there was a Raccoon here and tons of black-bellied squealer ducks. And just across the way, there's birds over there, lots of them. All right, let's get busy. The rain and the storm have arrived. Little drops of rain have started. As you can see the ripples on the water, the wind's getting pretty bad. All right, we got to start the mad dash to get this baby set up. Oh, he's He's making pretty good progress over there. It's only slightly raining. I got the island weed-eated and around the pond as well, so by the time Friday rolls around, it won't even look like I weed-eated, especially with this rain on the way. Ahem. Here's the progress over here. He almost has the pad built up enough, maybe another 6 to 12 inches. We'll see how it goes. Here is the extent of our rain. Not too bad, and it's just a little yellow cloud that's passing over the top of us, so we should be able to set up the blind here shortly. That's alright. Take a timeout, get hydrated, go back to work. Here we go. Blind all set up, ready for the workshop. There's the view of the pond. Get nice reflection shots. And then over here is the other blind. But it's just a single person. And the little orange thing in the tree, if you're asking, that's mosquito repellent. Disconnect the trailer, leave it out here for the night because he'll be back in the morning. So that's a wrap, and we are headed out for the night. See you next weekend for the PPA Spring Workshop.
