Backyard Photography in Chester County, Pennsylvania during March 2026: Warm-up Shots
As promised, here is the first post in my photography series from the "wildlife walks" around my small yard in the month of March. I'm starting the series with some objects and entities that I used for photography practice but didn't submit into iNaturalist for wildlife observations.
Although my goal was to photograph animals, sometimes I found other things to practice photography with, so only one of the photo subjects in this post will be an animal: The American Robin. Even though they are common, to the point of boredom, Robins also provide a good opportunity to practice with light settings (especially since they spend a lot of time on the ground, in shadows) so I wound up with many many pictures of Robins as I monkeyed around with the camera settings.
Besides the Robin, starting in mid-March, I also took pictures of the same pair of trees whenever I walked in order to track how they change during the month. Hopefully, we can see how budding progressed (although lighting makes this tricky, especially when comparing between sunny and cloudy days).
Finally, I have some photos of airplanes and the moon that I think are worth including in this post. So, here we go.
The American Robin
| March 1 - ƒ/6.3; 1/500; 359mm (83X); ISO320 | March 13 - ƒ/8; 1/320; 539mm; ISO400 |
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| March 25 - ƒ/7.1; 1/400; 467mm (108X); ISO800 (I was trying for a "head shot" here) | March 30 - ƒ/8; 1/320; 503mm (116X); ISO800 |
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Trees
| March 13 - ƒ/2.8; 1/1000; 4.3mm (1X); ISO100 | March 19 - ƒ/3.5; 1/1000; 10.7mm (2.5X); ISO100 |
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| March 23 - ƒ/8; 1/320; 8.5mm(2X); ISO100 | March 31 - ƒ/7.1; 1/400; 7.9mm(1.8X); ISO110 |
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The moon
Not an animal photo, or even a wildlife photo, but still a nature photo:
- ƒ/6.3
- 1/800
- 324mm (75X)
- ISO450
Airplanes
And for the final practice subjects that didn't make it into iNaturalist, we step away from the world of nature. Airplanes are actually convenient for practicing "in flight" shots, and we see a lot of them pass by on their way to the Philadelphia Airport or the Dover Airforce Base. Here are a few:
| March 21 - ƒ/7.1; 1/400; 395mm (91X); ISO400 Claude said this is a "Boeing C-17 Globemaster III" out of Dover | March 28 - ƒ/5.6; 1/500; 198mm (45X); ISO220 |
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| March 29 - ƒ/6.3; 1/1250; 306mm(71X); ISO320 Note the American Flag on the tail. Maybe American Air? | March 29 - ƒ/6.3; 1/1250; 306mm(71X); ISO800 |
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Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this first round of photos from my March "wildlife walks". For future posts in the March series, I think we'll be staying entirely in the areas of plants and animals - mostly animals.
All photos above were taken by me with a Nikon P1000 camera and I'm sharing them under the CC BY 4.0 license (share & adapt freely with attribution to the original source).