Wildlife photographer Don Orkoskey races videographer Thomas to photograph the most bird species in four hours, one from a boat and one from shore. Don finds 21 species to Thomas's 11, and shares practical tips on gear handling, boat logistics, and using eBird and Merlin to plan the shoot.
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Hey, it's Don from WDO Photography, and if you're new here, I'm a nature and wildlife photographer as well as a photography teacher. This video here is the result of a collaboration that I'm doing with an amazing local videographer named Thomas. Thomas reached out to me and he said, hey, I've got this great idea for a video. You're an established wildlife photographer, I'm just getting into wildlife photography. We could do a really fun video together where we just have a friendly competition to see who can photograph the most bird species. And I said, I love it, let's do it. Now the problem is both of us are making a video about this competition, so I'm really kind of struggling with how to start this video, which is why I'm here. And 2, I want to make sure that it is worth watching for you other than it just being fun to see the competition. I'm going to talk to you about things that myself and Thomas both could have done better, and some things that we do really well that can help you learn to be a better nature and wildlife photographer. Make sure to stay tuned to the end because you'll find out all of those tips that I have to offer, and you'll find out who won the competition. Let's get into it.
So I am here with Don and we're doing a little, little friendly competition. Uh, we are going to see how many or who can get the most species of birds in 4 hours.
You know, you're going out on the boat, so I would say, um, you know, make sure that you throttle down and keep things quiet as you're approaching, um, and be patient. That's really the biggest thing when it comes to Photographic birds.
Okay, well, you ready to get started?
I'm ready to get started. Let's start at the top.
What is that? That's the osprey, maybe, or buzzard.
No, it's a hawk of some sort. Okay. Yeah, I can't tell with the way that the sun's hitting it. It would have been—
I am beautiful learning my birds. On 3. 1, 2, 3.
Go.
All right, good luck. Here we go, guys. 4 hours.
Some little songbirds over here in this tree. See what I can find here. I was on foot and Thomas was going out on his boat, which gave me a nice head start.
I'm gonna put some ND filters on here, but we need to get out. So I just finished and I have about 3 hours and— oops, trying to get this on my face— 3 hours and 39. Minutes left. So he got about 20, 20-minute head start on me, but what I'm hoping is the boat will help, help me catch up.
I came over here because this heron— it's coming back, actually. I came over because this heron was here, but I couldn't quite see where it landed. Turned out I I got a little too close, so it took off, but now it's gone back over to where I was. I want to be more over there anyways. It's a little bit— there's a little more sun over there, a little bit more light, plus I've got a clear view of it as I'm approaching, so it should be much easier to get photos of it. It's important to try not to scare birds away if possible. And do not chase after them like I did here, especially if you can't see where they are as you're approaching. This heron does not want to be photographed. So I think I'm gonna leave it be.
I'm having some problems with the boat, and I know what the problem is. When I made this quick connect, I kind of cut into one of the wires, and I was like, ah, it'll be okay. And the wire kind of is giving out, so I have to hold it together to give the trolling motor power. So not the biggest deal in the world, having some technical issues today.
I think the background noise of the road will work to my advantage because it's going to help disguise any noise I'm making. This is a benefit to photographing in developed places like city parks or more rural areas that have major roads running through them, but it's still best to be as quiet and still as possible when you're photographing birds. Now I could move over To this other section over here in front of me, but then I'm going to be getting all backlit shots and I don't want that. So instead, I'm going to hang out here and see what I can find and just be a little patient. 2, because I'm Sort of hidden behind this bush. Because I'm hidden behind this bush, it's possible that the herring will return.
Oar is back on. We're going. So basically I had to disconnect and strip the disconnect. Luckily I had my, um, camera tool. I believe that this is a SmallRig tool right here. And it saved me, so I can keep going. And I'll just have to redo the quick connect, order a new one, and, um, do a better job of making sure the connections are secure. All right, let's take some photos. First, let's see how much time we have left. I have 2 hours and 18 minutes left. Let's see how many birds we can get. I keep getting the lens not attached properly error message that I kind of knew I was gonna get, and so, uh, it's just easier for me to reset it.
If you're using a long lens, it's important to hold the lens rather than the camera. The mounting rigs on these are generally only held together with 3 tiny screws, so the pressure you put on them when only holding the camera and not supporting the lens can really strip them away, or at the very least, it can cause disconnection errors like the ones that Thomas is having here. Therefore, make sure you're holding the lens rather than the camera. Ah, I just spotted Thomas. He's over in that spot that he said that there are often herons. I'm watching the kingfisher, just took off. I think I spooked it. It's flying over towards the other section of the park here.
Ah, there was so many birds over here in the morning. I know Don killed it. I'm, I'm really excited to see his I'm gonna go back and watch the video and see how many birds he caught. I mean, other than the, the duck, I got the ducks, the geese, and I got the heron. You know I love the heron.
I would like to get a good idea of my count. Let me see here on how many birds I've got. Canada goose, hillbilly sapsucker, the downy woodpecker, warbler, sparrow. It's a different sparrow. It's like 2 types of sparrows. Nuthatch, Carolina wren, not Carolina wren, Carolina chickadee. That's 10. A lot of the chicken. It's up to 10 now, so that's 11. It seems like it worked, so we're gonna keep it at 11. Thomas is not a bird. Kingfisher, that's 12. Great blue heron, that's 13. Mallards, 14. This other type of goose, that's 15. It's the same warblers. 15 different species of birds.
I was just talking about you and I said that Don is probably killing it right now. He is killing it. Don, I got 3 birds so far because— oh, and my lens keeps disconnecting because of the Viltrox adapter. Yeah, just so I got 3 birds. 3 great shots though.
Nice.
How have you been doing? Really well?
I'm up to 16.
Oh, I knew it!
In fact, um, you know, I got a late start this morning. Yeah. I was a few minutes late. Um, I didn't eat any breakfast. I think I might go—
Oh, get some breakfast? Okay. Yeah, um, I had one egg. Huh? Yeah, I can catch up.
Here's a vital time-saving tip: eat your breakfast, kids, especially if you're in the middle of a photography contest. Otherwise, you'll end up eating gas station breakfast pizza and losing a lot of time like I did here. I think I was gone for probably 45 minutes. Now, it all worked out in the end, but I really would have loved to have that extra time to photograph rather than driving all over the place. So I had to come over to the visitor center and get a pass. Even though I paid online, I have to get this guy.
I wanted to anchor, but I hit one and missed a shot. And then I did get a nice shot. I didn't see where it went. Well, we need that for the bald eagles. Actually, let's see how much time I have left. 1 hour 21 minutes. Still up to about 6 birds. Yep, there they are. Okay, so the sun is in my eyes right now, so, so there is the kingfisher. I love it. What I'm going to do, I'm trying to get the sun out of my eyes, trying to Coming to the shade, so I'm gonna have to switch my settings too once I get in the shade, cuz I can't see anything right now.
After breakfast, I got a few more species but not great photos of any of them. Like, I got these 2 bald eagles, but I only got them flying away. And I got this bluebird, but it's surrounded by branches. And there were a lot of repeats like the Swirbler. I really want to point out this big mistake that I made here in not balancing my gimbal. Watch as I loosen the screw and how the lens dives forward. It wouldn't do this if it were properly balanced, but this is an issue with external versus internal zooming lenses. I walked back to the boat launch area but didn't see any really good opportunities. The sun was getting too high and most of the birds had moved on, so I took the opportunity to grab some photos of Thomas like these. Time is nearly up. Looks like Thomas is making his way back. We have
1
minute.
Dawn Unofficially has about 20. We'll see when he does the final count, but it's definitely more than me, which I have about 9, maybe 10. So Don has some tips for me because he's been doing this for years. So what are the tips that you have?
Yeah, so when you first invited me out for this challenge, you know, I came out and met, met up with you and, and we Came here, checked the place out. Uh, you gave me some information about where you see different things— the cormorants over there, the herons in different spots. And then I went home and opened up Google Maps and, and just scoured the, the shoreline. Yeah. You know, looking at where different things are, um, seeing, oh, maybe I'd like to go here or there, and Sort of planning things out, right? Then I opened up eBird,
which I just learned about today from Jim. Is that his name? Was his name Jim?
Yeah. Okay, I got it right. Jim.
Yeah.
So yeah, eBird's great. Merlin is great for identifying birds that are like, like if you listen to it, you could hear.
Is it like Merlin the magician?
Yeah, or like Merlin the bird? Oh, okay, okay, okay. It's called Merlin. Yeah, so, um, Merlin helps you to identify birds by sound or sight. Like, here comes some crows. I don't know if you got any crows. I didn't get any. I didn't get any crows today. They just now showed up. Yeah, so, um, but, uh, you could identify them by sound or by taking a picture of them. So if you take a picture of your picture, it'll, it'll help. Oh, okay. Where things are. But eBird is super helpful because people map out where they're finding things. So I could see specific locations and species that people were finding here. So I knew, okay, I'm gonna find bluebirds, I'm gonna find a bunch of warblers, um, and Carolina wrens, titmice, those sort of, those sort of things. And that's a lot of what I found today. Herons, obviously. Yeah. As you know, there's, there's a lot of herons here. So, um, and that helped me to understand, okay, where, where should I go? What is it that they say? The, the map is not the territory, right? Yeah. Um, because getting here this morning and thinking like, okay, maybe I'll go over there for this or that— I saw, you know, this, this person listed this— but really right
So I was about to ask you, what was your hottest spot?
Is where I captured most of the birds that I got today.
So in the morning when you— when we first got here, what would you say in that first maybe 30 minutes, uh, because did you stay here for about 30 minutes or an hour when we first got here on this side?
I actually started walking and I walked over there pretty immediately.
Okay, so,
uh,
over to that way?
Yeah. Okay. Near that little nook. Yeah, where you got the heron at. Um, and there was a heron there. Yeah, so I got it flying around a bit. Um, but not a lot in the way of songbirds.
But you got most of the songbirds over here when you came back over here.
There are a bunch of bluebirds that are over here. There are so many warblers and just everything right here next to the boat launch. So yeah, it's a great spot. Well, there you have it. If you're ready for the final count, I'll give it to you now. So Thomas ended up with 11 species overall, and here's a list of everything he got. Now, I double-checked through things using Merlin to take pictures of the photos that we both got. As for me, I got a couple more. My final count was 21, and here's a list of all the birds that I was able to photograph that day. Again, I probably would have gotten more had I not stopped to go get breakfast. I really want to thank Thomas for inviting me for this challenge. It was so much fun. I had such a blast, and we are planning to repeat it somewhere else sometime soon, so be on the lookout for that. In addition to that, I highly recommend that you go check out Thomas's channel and subscribe to him. He's teaching all sorts of videography content, So if you're interested in videography and you want to learn more and improve your videography skills, Thomas's channel is the place to do it for sure. I'll put the link to him down in the description, and I'll also probably put it somewhere up here where you can check— click on it to check it out. Speaking of YouTube channels, I hope that you'll subscribe to my channel here, especially if you want to learn more about nature and wildlife photography, or photography more generally. In fact, for 2026, I'm going to be dropping a lot more content, including some short-form videos that will break down hard-to-understand photography concepts and make it easier for you to understand them and improve your skills. So if you enjoy that sort of thing, be sure to stick around and subscribe. Also, check out this video right here for 3 more amazing tips help you immediately improve your nature and wildlife photography. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.
