The birds around here don't stick around long enough to let me earn their trust, but I can get pretty close to the deer, rabbits, and squirrels just by pointing the camera off to my side so I'm standing perpendicular and appear to be focused on stuff on the ground instead of them.

Oh damn I meant to mention rabbits! At least the ones around me don’t even mind if I point a camera at them so long as I’m looking another way. So I have lots of good blurry or poorly aimed rabbit photos. They really do seem to believe that if they go totally still nothing can see them until proven otherwise. And maybe they’re right, I almost always have to tell my pup “there’s a bun!” And even then it’s usually after I’ve directed her chase before she sees the fleeing things.

You see a rabbit mostly against the grass or bush it's hiding around. A dog sees it against all the scattered terrain behind it. It's amazing how much difference an extra 4-5 feet of height makes for picking thigs out of a background.

This is a perfectly reasonable explanation, but I actively try to get my pup to see the buns around her and she stops seeing them when they stand still even if she had already seen them. She’s a very smart pup, but has a distinct bunny blindness!