Great places to practice digiscoping 1 - local duck pond

What a grand title! I think I am getting better at this whole title thing. (but correct me if I am wrong ;-)

Taking a photo using a good digiscoping setup is incredibly simple.
Taking a half decent photo with a digiscoping setup is not so easy.
Taking great photos through a digiscoping setup is flippin' hard.

Making the progression from level one to two to three takes lots of time, effort and patience; although a cup full of luck also helps. But then again, Gary Player always said that the more he practiced the luckier he got.

But how can you possibly practice when all the little birds keep flying away?

The trick is to start with larger birds and birds that tend to move in regular ways. Try going down to a local town park and taking photos of the ducks and geese. You will find that the larger birds make good photographic subjects, they tend to move about in a less frantic manner (unless, they are chasing each other about), and are not necessarily as shy as wild birds.

1. choose a large subject that is sitting still

Choose a subject that is still. This sitting Mandarin Duck (at Schloß Ambras, just outside Innsbruck) made a great subject - he was dead still for ages, which meant that I could use a 4sec timer on my camera. This meant that there was little or no camera shake to disturb the image, even though I was forced to use a fairly slow shutter speed (1/50sec) because it was kinda dark in the tree.

2. Try to follow a swimming duck, adjusting the focus as the duck moves.

When you are feeling a little more confident, find a swimming duck and try to track the duck through the water. You will probably find that the ducks move more slowly and calmly when they are just left to themselves. Making a noice to attract their attention, or throwing food, is likely to make them move faster and make your job of digiscoping them so much harder. As you are following the ducks, you will get used to focusing quickly and having your camera ready to take the shot. Try to use as little zoom as possible (particularly from your camera) as this will tend to reduce the amount of light you are able to use (slower photo=more camera shake/blur) and is likely to soften the images (unless you have a great quality lens). Don't be afraid to take lots of photos - you can always throw the poor photos away.

When you are really getting confident, you can start to look up in to the trees around the pond. Try to find a subject that is sitting relatively still and not too high up - eye-level would be great. This Blue Tit came and sat on a bush right in front of me while I was playing with the ducks:

3. find a bird in a bush/tree somewhere near you
(btw, that is what happens to a photo when you sharpen it too much in photoshop ;-)

I have another great spot to practice digiscoping techniques and get ready for spring birding, but I will leave that to my next post.

Photographing birds of prey in flight

This article will guide you through some of the basics of photographing the many beautiful birds of prey that can be seen at bird of prey centres across the UK, and to a greater extent, across the globe. This article does not try to cover every method of photographing birds of prey or indeed, wild birds. Instead, it aims to offer some advice and guidance to help develop and improve your own techniques.
As with photographing any moving object, a steady hand and smooth panning action will prove invaluable; as will a fast shutter speed.
For this article I used the following equipment to take the images displayed:

• Nikon D300
• Nikon AF-S VR 70-300mm F/4.5-5.6 G IF-ED lens

As it was a fairly bright but overcast day, I set the White balance to Cloudy (although you can simply leave this set to Auto, especially if you are shooting in RAW). The camera was set to take 6fps and either continuous focus or single point focus depending on the flight of the bird (a panning shot or towards the camera). Finally, the camera and lens were set to autofocus to ensure quick and accurate focusing on the moving object (for panning) and manual focus for forward flight shots.

Overview

With many of the birds of prey centres offering displays, this will prove invaluable for you to both experience photographing these birds in the air, and to see the typical flight patterns, launch methods and the general speed of the birds on display.
If you are new to shooting birds of prey or have a shorter zoom lens, then the various owls that are regularly on display will prove to be an excellent starting point to learn, as these birds tend to be larger and slower at taking off and in flight. Additionally, they tend to fly low to the ground and as such are easier to track and pan while photographing.

Take off and landing

If you take some time to watch the birds you will soon notice that the typical owl, when taking off from a perch or structure, will initially tense its body and then drop off and swoop towards the ground; flying at low level until it is about to land (assuming it isn’t attacking its prey) and then swoop upwards, spread its wings to slow it and stick its legs and feet forward before landing.
Once you become accustomed to this, you will soon learn to anticipate its launch, pre-empt its flight path and be able to pan along with it while shooting.
You should find that you will quickly become accustomed to panning along the birds flight path, and if your camera is firing in burst mode (which I’d recommend), you should achieve several sharp and in focus shots of the flight.
To get the best effect, I’d recommend using a large aperture (from f2.8 to f8 should suffice) to throw the background out of focus and ensure that the focal point is the bird in flight. Using a shutter speed equal to or greater than your focal length should also help to get sharp images (IS or VR lenses should allow slower shutter speeds and retain a good degree of focus). Finally, try to set the eyes of the bird (if the flight path allows it) as the focal point. The secret to many good bird shots is having the eyes pin sharp, even if the rest of the bird is a little soft and out of focus.

Panning

Panning is a simple technique to understand, and in practice can produce stunning results. Basically, panning requires you to hold the camera to your eye, focus on the starting point of the moving object, and as the subject moves along its path, you mimic the movement with your camera, attempting to keep the same focal point throughout your pan.
Depending on your subject type and the expected path, a monopod can prove useful to reduce camera shake and allow for a smooth panning action. This is especially true when using slower shutter speeds to add motion blur to your background and keep your subject sharp and in focus. This technique is seen a lot in motorsports photography, but can also add a sense of speed to bird of prey photography.
Taking time to perfect your panning technique can really pay dividends when photographing moving objects, especially birds in flight.

Forward Motion

Another method of photographing birds of prey in flight is to position yourself directly in front of the bird before it takes off. The method for photographing birds using this technique is slightly different to the panning technique and requires the camera to be set up slightly differently.
The aim of this method is to fire off a burst of shots as the bird launches, but instead of using the continuous focus method used with the panning technique; you switch the camera to manual focus and use a predetermined focal point that the bird will fly through to photograph. By using the burst mode on your camera just before the bird enters your focal point, you can almost guarantee a couple of sharp shots during the burst.
You will tend to find that the middle couple of shots will prove the best, as the first and last shots will normally be too soon and too late within the birds flight path to be focussed correctly.
This technique may take a little time to perfect, but once you become accustomed to determining the bird’s flight path and the correct time to start shooting, the whole process will become far more intuitive.
Again, a large aperture and fast shutter speed (equal to or greater than your focal length) should help you to get sharp results. And as stated in the panning technique, focusing on the eyes and head will help draw the attention towards the birds face and focus the viewer’s attention.
I hope this brief guide has given you some useful techniques to try and that the images accompanying the article show you the type of results you can expect to achieve using them.
As always, I’d love to see your results, so please feel free to share them in the WZ2K Forums.

Beware the birds! They ARE bright enough to choose who to attack

The skies of his apocalyptic film were filled with dive-bombing, murdering birds.
But although Alfred Hitchcock's airborne killers were nothing more than fiction, scientists say they aren't as different from normal birds as we'd like to believe.
The Birds tells the story of a small Californian town whose inhabitants are attacked and murdered by aggressive flocks of birds.

Heads up: A mockingbird dive-bombs a student at the University of Florida after recognising her as a threat to its nest

In an experiment which echoed the director's 1963 thriller, researchers proved that wild birds could remember the faces of people who threatened their nests.
They could then single them out for dive-bombing attacks. The study was carried out on mockingbirds in the U.S. but British birds could be equally vindictive, the experts believe.
Mockingbirds are one of the most common species on campus at the University of Florida. They nest in trees and shrubs close to the ground.
For the study, scientists asked student volunteers to walk up to the nests and touch the edge before leaving without harming the eggs or chicks.
The same volunteers did this for several days. On the fifth day, different volunteers approached the 24 nests.
The experiment was repeated at least five times last year and scientists began to see a pattern.

Hold on to your hair: Hitchcock's classic thriller, The Birds, showed what can happen when birds turn bad

On the first day, the birds would wait until the students approached the nest before flying off and making alarm calls.
By the third day, the birds had learned the faces of their 'attackers' and would raise the alarm while the students were still some way off.
They were able to recognise the threat even when the students wore different clothes and approached from different angles.
Each day, the birds became more aggressive. Some even dive-bombed the students  - grazing their heads with their beaks.
But when a different set of students approached the nests, the birds ignored them - flying out of the bushes only at the last moment.
They also made fewer alarm calls and were less aggressive when strangers approached, found the report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researcher Dr Doug Levey, said: 'We tend to view all mockingbirds as equal, but the feeling is not mutual.'
It took only two visits from a student for the birds to recognise the threat. Dr Levey added: 'Sixty seconds of exposure was all it took for mockingbirds to learn to identify different individuals and pick them out of all other students on campus.
'We think that our experiments reveal an underlying ability to be incredibly perceptive of everything around them, and to respond appropriately when the stakes are high.'
The study has not been carried out on British birds - but it is likely that some of the smarter species may share the mockingbird's talent for recognising people.
The experiment is the first time scientists have shown that wild animals in their natural settings can recognise individual people.

Losing Wild Birds: Where did my sparrows, finches & other birds go?

Western bluebird by Joe Oliver, Walnut Creek, Calif.

A new Audubon California study released today (Feb. 10) finds that the state will lose significant numbers of its native birds as climate change quickly shrinks the range and habitat of more than 100 species.
You can read the whole news story here: http://www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_11667912?IADID=Search-www.contracostatimes.com-www.contracostatimes.com

Robin by Joe Oliver, Walnut Creek, Calif.

Over a year ago I started getting e-mails and letters from my readers asking me, “Where are my wild birds?”
The weather had been weird — hot when it should have been cold, cold when it should have been hot, dry when it needed to be wet … sound familiar?
So I did one of my quickie little surveys. The results were published in the Jan. 5, 2008 Home and Garden Section of our Bay Area News Group-East Bay newspapers. Basically, 90 bird species had been spotted in 152 Bay Area backyards in 37 Bay Area cities. I also provided a list of the 90 species.
We’ve got a golden opportunity here to do another survey today and compare the results with my survey of a year ago to see if our local wild bird and wild bird species numbers are indeed dropping as the Audubon Society study suggests. Have the numbers gone down from a year ago? Let’s find out.
All you need to do is take a few moments to follow the instructions below. This is the identical survey request I sent out a year ago.
Please help us see if we are indeed losing some of our wild bird species. I’ll also publicize this information in my daily newspaper columns to help us get as wide a response as possible. This is the same thing I did a year ago.
Killdeer by Joe Oliver, Walnut Creek, Calif.

Survey: GOT BIRDS?
What kinds of birds do you see in your yard?
I’m doing a quickie survey on the subject. I get a lot of mail asking, “Where are my birds?” Apparently some people don’t see very many, so I thought I’d check and try to find out.
Please take a moment to send me a list of the different types of bird species you’ve seen in your front yard or backyard in the past two weeks (songbirds, quails, herons, woodpeckers, doves, hummingbirds, hawks, owls, waterfowl, whatever).
Have you noticed a drop in the bird numbers of any species? Which species? Are there any species that you’ve stopped seeing? Which ones?
Also include your name, city, nearest cross streets to your house, and a phone number (I’ll keep it confidential) in case I have a quick question. I’ll print the results of this survey here in my blog and in my column. Thanks!
** Enter the information under Comments/Reply below.
The adventure begins. /Gary
Read the Audubon California study here: ca.audubon.org
White pelican by Joe Oliver, Walnut Creek, Calif.

Romy Ocon for 19th Philippine Travel Mart Photo Exhibit

Romy Ocon one of the featured Photographers of the 19th Philippine trevel Mart Photo Exhibit.
In the growing community of local diehard birdwatchers, photographer Romy Ocon is somewhat of an icon: he has taken some of the most compelling images of the Philippines’ wild birds. The self-taught, colorblind wild bird photographer is among the country’s pioneers of the genres and is widely considered the best in the field. He is also one of the foremost advocates for raising awareness to protect the natural habitat of the wild birds.

“Grass Owl”
Night Hunter
in the Philippines, where there are close to 600 bird species, nearly approximately 180 of those endemic to the country, rare and magnificent winged creatures fly freely in their natural habitat. Romy Ocon captured this image of the Grass Owl (scientific name Tytolongimembris) at the Candaba Wetlands in Pampanga.

“Pheasant-tailed Jacana”
High Tail
This ornately feathered bird is found in freshwater wetlands with an abundance of floating or emergent vegetation. In breeding plumage, its tail becomes longer and its hind neck turns to golden yellow. It measures a total length of up to 585 mm during breeding. The Hydrophasianus chirurgus is a Philippine resident, and it ranges from India to China to Southeast Asia.

“Handsome Sunbird”
Looking Good
Local and international bird-watchers spend up to a month traveling the Philippines’ major birding sites. Some of them roll out of bed at three am to get an early start, then trek for hours to get to a birding site. Among the most difficult to photograph in its natural habitat, is the tiny and, with a total length of less than 100 mm, Handsome Sunbird (scientific name Aethophyga bella).
see more photos at the 19th Philippine Trave Mart!

source photo.net

pictures of birds hitting aircraft flying time

Wild birds protected under common wings

Wild birds know no borders, so the conservation of endangered species requires trans-frontier cooperation. The first European directive to protect wild birds was adopted in 1979 and is the oldest EU environmental law still in force. It restricts hunting and prohibits deliberate killing and destroying of nests and eggs. For its 30th birthday, lawyers are working to give it a new, clearer and more concise shape.

Several thickly filled pages under slightly mysterious Latin taxonomy contain dozens of bird species that are protected under EU law. Among them, one can find familiar feathered creatures like the common crane (Grus grus), but also some whose names may sound a bit curious like Cursorius cursor (cream-colored courser), or Eurasian woodcock (Scolopax rusticola).

 

"Conservation of wild birds is a very good example of an area where international cooperation is necessary: birds know no borders, hence national legislation is less efficient than joint action within the EU," said Polish Socialist Lidia Joanna Geringer de Oedenberg , who deals with this directive on behalf of the Legal Affairs Committee.

 

Economic development is the worst enemy of wild birds. Industrialisation, environmental pollution, human settlement and large scale farming break the food chain and suppress natural habitats of many species. 

 

The directive envisages the creation of protected areas the upkeep and management of habitats in accordance with ecological needs and stresses the need to re-establish and create biotopes.

 

It forbids the deliberate killing or capture of birds by any method, the deliberate destruction or removal of nests and eggs and the taking of eggs in the wild even if they are empty.

 

The rules also forbid the deliberate disturbance of the birds particularly during the breeding and rearing period.

 

It also imposes restrictions or a total ban on hunting of certain species.

 

The aim is to simplify existing laws to better protect the birds. The new legislation will replace separate rules. The MEPs approved the legislation on Tuesday.