Tim Laman

| Wildlife Photojournalist

Wildlife Diaries

The Wildlife Diaries newsletter is the best way to keep up to date with Tim Laman’s latest work and travels, and to learn about photography and natural history as well. Read through his recent posts here or sign up to receive the posts via email using the form on the right.

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Photographing My Local Nesting Birds

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Dear Friends,

I hope you have been having a nice spring and relishing the new life all around us here in the Northern Hemisphere.  These past two springs, due to the pandemic, I have been traveling less than usual, and focusing my lenses on more local projects.  One of those has been a filming project with Connecticut-based Coneflower Studios to document the lives of woodpeckers and their importance in the ecosystem.  Did you know that woodpeckers create cavities that are used by over forty species of birds for nesting just in North America?  While working on the film project, which is now going into post-production, I was also able to capture some still photos.  

Stay tuned here, and I’ll let you know when the film is coming out.  In the mean time, I’ve selected a few stills below to share.  I had never spent much effort to observe or photograph the pileated woodpecker before this, but this impressive bird has now become one of my local favorites.  Hope you enjoy the shots below!

The Ant Specialist

The pileated woodpecker, our largest woodpecker in North America (assuming the ivory-billed woodpecker is indeed extinct), is rather surprisingly, an ant specialist.  Although the prey are small, they are abundant, and the pileated’s powerful size allows it to excavate deep into trees where its favorite carpenter ants make their large colonies.  I’m lucky enough to have these birds occupying the woods right behind my house in Lexington, Massachusetts, and one day my daughter spotted this male working on a dead tree right from the house.  I grabbed my camera and started photographing, gradually and very deliberately moving my tripod closer and closer.  Within about 30 minutes, the bird was still busy excavating multiple holes in the same tree and feeding, and tolerated my presence close enough to get this shot with an 800 mm lens.  I knew he was eating ants, but because the bird was using its long tongue to probe the tunnels, and bringing the ants directly into its mouth, I never saw him with an ant until this one moment, when he leaned back, and one ant that almost got away dangled from his beak!

The Cavity Nesters

Woodpeckers excavate cavities in dead trees for roosting and nesting, but they are not the only birds that use them.  Abandoned woodpecker holes are used by many other species as well, so they play a particularly important role in the community of birds.  All the images below were made not far from my home in Massachusetts.

When pileated woodpecker chicks reach a certain size, they stick their little heads out of their nest cavity and beg loudly when a parent approaches with food, making for a pretty entertaining scene.

I found a pair of bluebirds nesting in this small woodpecker hole in a dead white birch tree along the edge of a beaver pond.  Here you see the male delivering a caterpillar to the chicks.

This pair of shots shows the changing of the guard as the two parents swap incubation duties at their nest.  These tree swallows are nesting in a tree cavity that I hollowed out myself.  I think birds take even more readily to nest boxes made out of hollow logs than the more typical ones made from boards.

 Barred owls like these also often nest in tree cavities as well.  This is not necessarily a woodpecker hole, but who knows, perhaps this rotted out hollow in the tree could have started from a large excavation by a Pileated Woodpecker many years ago!

Thanks for tuning in to my adventures, and stay tuned.  Soon, I’m heading off to Borneo after a nearly three year break, and I’ll be sharing updates on my social channels!  

Stay safe everyone, and be sure to get your dose of nature therapy!

Warmest regards,

Tim Laman

PS.  We are partnering with the Aves Gallery to showcase some of my very large format, Limited Edition, Bird-of-Paradise prints at the Ketchum Art Festival, from July 8-10 in Sun Valley, Idaho.  If you are curious about my Limited Edition Birds-of-Paradise prints, you can learn more HERE.

Capturing the “Ibis Moon” Image

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Dear Friends,

I hope this finds you well and feeling optimistic about 2021.  It’s going to be another challenging year, but I think things are looking up.  Stepping outside last night to have a look at the full moon, I was reminded of my image below.  It’s not often I can include the moon in an image of birds, but when it happens, it makes for something special.  I hope you enjoy the story behind the image.

Ibis Moon
I was in the remote outer delta of the Orinoco River in Venezuela, in pursuit of images of one of the most brightly colored birds on the planet, the Scarlet Ibis.  The mangrove islands in the delta provided these birds with the perfect roosting site, safe from predators, and close to the mudflats where they foraged at low tide.  Every afternoon, ibises would come flying back to their roosts, and this give me the chance for some flight shots.  One afternoon as the sun neared the horizon, the waxing gibbous moon, a couple days away from full, was rising in the eastern sky and I noticed that some of the small groups of ibises sometimes passed almost in front of the moon.  Moving the small boat I was shooting from to line up the approaching ibises with the moon the best I could, I started tracking and shooting the flying birds as they passed near the moon.  This image was the result, and I love the way the composition is balanced between the three birds and the moon.  I also love the simple but bold color palette of the image.  It is rare to have a color photograph that has basically just two bright colors, the red birds and the blue sky.  It is very satisfying to capture a moment like this in a still photograph, which you know will never ever be repeated.  It’s a one-of-a-kind image.
IBIS MOON is part of my Limited Edition selection of prints
[Read more…] about Capturing the “Ibis Moon” Image

Thanks a Million Teaser

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Thanks to your interest in my photos and stories, I recently hit 1,000,000 followers on Instagram!

It’s been a busy few days here in Indonesia, but I’ve had a little bit of downtime to think about how to properly celebrate the occasion, and I think I came up with the perfect idea…

I’ll fill you in tomorrow – stay tuned, and thanks so much to everyone who helped me reach this incredible milestone. 

All the best, Tim

New Galleries Including Birds-of-Paradise!

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Tim Laman Fine Art is pleased to announce our new updated gallery including some of Tim’s most iconic images of Birds-of-Paradise.  Now, all prints will be personally signed by Tim in the white border below the image. 

We know many of you have been waiting for this, so thanks for your patience.  Now is your chance to own and brighten up your home or office with a signed, Tim Laman original print of the world’s most incredible birds.  If you don’t see your favorite Bird-of-Paradise image in the gallery, just email us at studio@timlaman.com.  We will be adding more soon and are taking requests!

Buy This Print Now!

Tim sends out personal emails to keep you up to date on his current projects, like the new website for selling his prints.  Now all of Tim’s prints will be autographed.  Please check back often to see additional galleries of Tim Laman’s work. 

Browse Tim Laman’s Art Galleries

My New Newsletter

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Dear Friends,

I’ve decided to use this format to share my work with you, where I can go beyond the brevity of social media and give you a little more.  I’ll share a favorite photo and the story behind it, and keep you up to date on my major projects.  So welcome and thanks for following along on my journey.

Over the past two years, I’ve worked on a unique project that has recently come to fruition: “The Birds of Sunnylands”.  In 2016, I received a unique commission from the Annenberg Foundation.  The mission was to document the birdlife of the Sunnylands Center and Gardens, their sanctuary in the Coachella Valley, California, to create a gallery exhibit for their visitor center.  So in 2017 and 2018, I made eight trips in different seasons photograph birds there.  I really enjoyed this project.  While very different from my remote editorial work on subjects like Birds-of-Paradise or Orangutans, it allowed me to focus on the artistic aspects of my photography, and as always, to try to create images that share the beauty of the natural world and inspire people to care about leaving space on this planet for wildlife.

Dining By Moonlight – Anna’s Hummingbird

It was early October in the Coachella Valley, and as usual, I was out before sunrise.  As I passed a row of honeysuckle bushes where I had often photographed hummingbirds, I noticed the full moon beginning to set behind them just as glow of dawn cast a little light on the flowers.  I knew the hummingbirds would be starting to forage, and I had an idea –  a hummingbird silhouette against the moon.  The trick was to get a hummingbird in the right spot before the moon disappeared.  I found some flowers that lined up with the moon, got ready to shoot, and as the hummingbirds began their foraging rounds, I gambled that one would come to that cluster of flowers.  My efforts were rewarded, and I captured this unique shot. 

The above image, along with fifty other images from this project, are now on exhibit at the Sunnylands Center through next spring.  They are printed in large format on recycled aluminum that I have to say looks pretty stunning.  So I hope if you are in the Palm Springs area at all this winter, you will take the opportunity to check out the exhibit. 

I’d also like to take this chance to announce that in order to allow people to purchase the same beautiful metal prints that are on exhibit at the Sunnylands Center this winter, we have set up a new online store called “Tim Laman Fine Art”.  Please have a look, if for no other reason than to see a broader selection of this work.

Tim Laman Fine Art

Finally, I’ve taken the liberty of adding you to my email list because we have met or corresponded in the past, but of course, you are free to unsubscribe below if you wish. 

Thanks for reading and all the best,  Tim