Inside Vogue’s Great Birding Adventure

A few months ago, the Vogue team ventured up to Bar Harbor, Maine, with one purpose in mind: to see some birds in the season’s best tactical—well, fashionable and tactical—gear. The trip included models Ana Beatriz Cortes, Betsy Gaghan, and Sunday Rose in pieces by Phoebe Philo, Loewe, Michael Kors, and more, along with a local who joined the crew in his own attire: ornithologist Michael Good.

“When the email about participating in this shoot popped into my inbox, I thought to myself, What an unusual opportunity,” Good tells Vogue.

He became curious about birds at age 10, but wasn’t bird-obsessed until college. Now, Good maintains Three Pines Bird Sanctuary while hosting bird tours around the area. “I’m always thinking about lighting because I photograph birds,” he says. “So I was excited to see how it worked on a magazine shoot.”

The days the crew spent traversing Acadia National Park were filled with “lifers” for the models—a term for the first time you identify a bird out in nature. Good kept an eBird list of everything seen and heard during the shoot, which included geese, gulls, and a handful of birds from the Ardeidae family (among them, herons and egrets) that threatened to upstage the models with their long legs.

“This was my first time birding and I loved it,” Sunday Rose says of the experience. By the end of the shoot, she’d become a pro at spotting animals in Good’s monocular (a single-tube, hyper-focused device used with just one eye). “My favorite part was seeing the different birds during the hike and learning about the post-mating season.”

Among the major sightings of the day was a merlin, which Good saw with Gaghan. “It was so fun to watch her reaction,” the ornithologist says of that magic moment. “There was just this very cool little raptor happening to fly by and we caught it.”

Of course, Good couldn’t resist snapping a few of his own photos while on set, which yielded an apropos observation. “When we were out, they were just starting to change to their fall plumage, shedding the bright spring and summer wardrobe for their winter fashion,” he says. “Birds really have their own fashion by seasons, too.”