North of Sacramento is a wonderful network of refuges and wildlife areas that offers birders and photographers year-round opportunities.

The Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex stretches from Yuba City and Colusa to Red Bluff.

Between the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Game, they have preserved one of the largest collections of wildlife habitats in the country.

The Sacramento River National Wildlife Refuge annually hosts a series of walks with naturalists to discover the diversity of bird life in the refuge's riparian habitats. The walks are scheduled for March 17, April 13 and May 12. A fourth walk is scheduled for May 5 at Sutter National Wildlife Refuge. Registration is required at least three days in advance. For more information, see the website.

Closer to Sacramento, there are two areas that are my favorites for bird photography. They are Colusa National Wildlife Refuge and Gray Lodge Wildlife Area.

Both Colusa and Gray Lodge offer viewing areas and provide opportunities for photography and viewing from your vehicle. As a courtesy to others, please stay in your vehicle if you stop on the dirt roads. Leaving your vehicle will cause the birds to fly away.

The Colusa refugee has 4,500 acres of marsh, ponds and uplands. There is a three-mile auto tour through wetlands and a one-mile trail along a riparian slough.

Gray Lodge has 9,100 acres along the Pacific Flyway. In addition to bird viewing and photography, there is hunting and fishing in season.

You might recall a SacBee.com article on a rare duck discovered at the Colusa refuge from on Jan. 6, 2012. The falcated duck, usually found in China, created quite a sight for bird watchers and photographers who made the pilgrimage from all over the United States and Canada.

Tips on camera settings

I’ve received numerous emails asking me to describe the settings I use for my bird photography. I’ll mention them but remember that not all cameras have every setting I use. You can check the captions on the photos in the gallery to determine the camera and lenses I use for each.

First, I use a high ISO that allows me great flexibility to use slow F/stop long focal length telephoto lenses. I start with ISO 400 and work my way up to ISO 3200 and even sometimes use ISO 6400 if the shot is real important to me. High ISO settings are used when the light has faded, which is when most of the birds are coming home to roost for the night.

A problem with using the highest ISO settings is that they have the most digital noise -- digital artifacts that tend to degrade the image quality. I use Nik Software’s Define 2.0 to minimize the noise in the high ISO photos. I’d rather have the photo with a little noise than not have it at all.

For exposure, I use Aperture Value automatic setting that allows me to set an F/stop one or two stops closed down from the widest open aperture. On an F/4 lens I’ll begin by using F/8. That gives me enough depth-of-field for most of the bird to be in focus. As the light darkens, I can open the lens up to F/5.6 or even F/4 in the darkest light.

In bright daylight, I still won’t stop the lens down beyond F/8 because I want the bird to be sharp and stand out from the soft-focused background.

If you use AV Automatic though, make sure you monitor the shutter speed the camera is using because if the speed falls below 1/125 second, your photos may suffer image blur.

For metering I use the central spot in the viewfinder and for auto focus I use single point. Most digital single lens reflex cameras have the greatest focusing accuracy in the center of the viewfinder.

For a series of photos of the same subject, I set my camera in the continuous shooting mode. The drawback is all the photos you’ll have to wade through to select the best shot.

Finally, for birds in flight, I set my camera for AI Focus. That setting allows the camera’s focusing system to constantly change the focus as the birds fly by. If I’m photographing birds that are relatively stationary, I might use the Single Shot position.

Readers share birding photos

See the birding photographs from other Sacbee.com readers and share your own. It's easy:

• Upload to the gallery at sacbee.com/birdphotos.

• Email your pictures to birds@sacbee.com from your mobile phone or computer. For photos e-mailed to us, the subject of the e-mail will become the title, the sender name will be listed as the author and the body of the e-mail will appear as the photo caption. (Please delete any e-mail signature containing personal information.)

Tips for photographers

• See Dave's bird photos and get more tips in the gallery.

• The California Department of Fish and Game and California Watchable Wildlife sponsor a photography contest with cash and merchandise prizes. The contest runs until Feb. 29, 2012. Additional information with guidelines and submission details is available here.

• If you have questions about how to photograph birds or want to suggest an area we should cover, email me: davehenryphotography@gmail.com.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.