There is a 101-acre park in eastern Tucson, Arizona called Roy P. Drachman Agua Caliente Park. If you pick up the birder's list brochure, you'll see about 150 species listed. There's a photo of a Vermilion Flycatcher on the cover, and a different pose inside. And of course I mention this because those are my photos.

Click for larger image.

The photos were actually taken in the Galapagos, not in Arizona, but Pima County wanted a Vermilion Flycatcher so I was happy to provide it. (For a nominal fee of course.) I'll try to swing through the park when I'm in Arizona in November. There probably won't be any Vermilion Flycatchers – the list says they are common in summer – but I'll see whatever else they have flitting around.

Thanks to Google, I get such requests every once in a while. I haven't seen the publication yet, but I just received a check for a photo of an eagle fishing in the Mississippi. (A decent photo, but I think I can do a lot better.) The National Academy of Sciences wanted it for a brochure assessing the work of the Army Corps of Engineers on the river.

Another recent request was for a red-shouldered hawk. I don't think they were interested in the hawk per se – the publication is a physics textbook, and I think they wanted a photo of a bird sitting on a power line.

So it's nice to make a couple dollars doing something fun but it also highlights how difficult it would be to make a living at it. But if anyone wants to pay me a massive amount of money to go on a wildlife shoot, I'm all ears.