Photographers really love birds. And there are a lot of great bird photographs on the web, but mine are simply amazing, and I want to describe for you just how to duplicate my process so that you too can be an acclaimed bird photographer, and get dozens of likes on Facebook.

Rick’s Proven 14 Step Spray and Pray Birding Methodology

1. Buy a camera. You might need to spend a few hundred dollars on it, so save up. Birds tend to be really impressed by digital SLR cameras (SLR stand for something like single lens ‘Rick’, I think).
2. Buy a lens. Most digital SLR cameras don’t come with a lens, primarily because the manufacturers are cheap like that. So you might have to buy some kind of lens. The top mm number on the lens describes just how small a bird you can shoot–big number means small bird. I know this is counter-intuitive, but you really don’t need much beyond 55mm to capture a large bird, so a “kit” lens should be just fine. For humming birds you may want to go as high as 300mm, but nothing else about the lens matters. Just that top mm number. (Anyone know what the ‘mm’ stands for?)
3. Convince your mom to live in a condo. Trust me, this will make sense in a minute.
4. Convince your mom that the condo complex needs to have artificial ponds. Hang with me here… it gets easier in a moment.
5. Convince your mom that the condo complex with ponds should be in a major migratory path for some very large birds. If it only has small birds, you’ll probably have to spend like $200 on one of those big mm lenses, and that would suck, so make sure she chooses her condo well.
6. Convince your mom to have neighbors who stock the artificial ponds with bright orange gold fish, just cause they like to. If the neighbors won’t do it, then your mom will have to.
7. Convince your mom to get a kitten. I know this is a stretch, but we’re nearly there.
8. Convince your mom that she needs to invite the whole family over to see the new kitten…
9. TAKE YOUR CAMERA (with that lens!) when you visit the adorable kitten.
   
10. (ok, this probably should have been like step negative 13) Conceive and bear children who can watch for interesting things out of the car windows while you’re leaving your mom’s condo complex with the artificial ponds in the migratory path of big birds.
11. As you’re leaving your mom’s condo complex from visiting the adorable kitten, make sure your kids are watching out the window of the car for large migratory birds hunting in the artificial ponds.
12. When your children point out and you see the bird, implore your wife to pull over. It won’t take much convincing since she should already be aware of Rick’s Proven 14 Step Spray and Pray Birding Methodology. Make sure she pulls very close to the water’s edge. Its OK if there’s a little bit of water in the floorboards–the pond smell will wear off in a few months.
13. DON’T GET OUT OF THE CAR. Lower the window.
14. Turn on the camera. If you aren’t sure what settings to use, or you forget, don’t worry about it! Just set it to “P” (that means Professional!), point it at the bird, and just hold down the shutter button (that shiny silver one on the right) until the bird does something amazing. You should have 200-800 images when you are done.

There you have it. With Rick’s Proven Spray and Pray Birding Methodology you too will have amazing pictures of very large birds fishing for gold fish in artificial ponds.

(if you made it this far and didn’t detect my dry wit–the preceding was intended to be humorous while actually describing the string of incredible luck that lead me to capture the images above)