I'm shooting from inside my kitchen with 2 tripos legs literally set in the kitchen sink. I have 2 feeders set up about 15 feet from the window, and there are a lot of branches anywhere from 10 to 20 feet. Past that, there's pretty much nothing until the back of the yard (80 feet or so). I'm shooting with a Nikon D-100 and a 300mm Nikkor usually set around f5.6, which blurs the background pretty well. About the only thing I do to camoflage myself is wear a dark, long sleeve shirt. The noise of the camera doesn't seem to bother them too much - they may be used to hearing dishes clanging around in there, though.