For Whom the Bellbird Tolls

Bearded bellbird.

Not very far down the jungle trail from the main building of the Asa Wright Nature Centre, there's a sign that says Bearded Bellbird. When I first saw this, I thought "Right, like the birds always hang around right by the sign! How conVEEENient!"

Just then, the loud, ringing call note for which these birds are named clanged down from the forest canopy. There WAS a bearded bellbird and it was up there somewhere, calling repeatedly.

Moments later, Julie shouted "I've got the bellbird!" And she did. We scrambled into position to find the bird for binocular looks. Then we trained our spotting scopes on it. The bird was fairly close, reasonably well-lit, and every time it gave a note, its rastalike black wattles (or "beard") shook like wet spaghetti.

How sweet this was—my first decent look at a bellbird, one of those tropical species that jumps out at you from the field guide pages when you're dreaming of life birds. I'd heard bellbirds before. But seeing is bell-lieving.

I took a few still photos with my Leica digiscoping rig, then decided to shoot a short digital video. Here's what the bearded bellbird looked and sounded like at Asa Wright Nature Centre in Trinidad on Monday, July 20, 2009.

All I can add to this post is that bellbirds are LOUD! Talk about a bad bird to have around when you had a hangover. Not that that has ever happened to me. I'm just saying...

Quick Comparison: Digiscoping vs. D-SLR

Taking pictures in the rainforest—any rainforest or jungle or woods—is a challenge particularly due to the lack of light. On the recent digiscoping trip we took to Trinidad and Tobago, sponsored by Leica Sport Optics, I got to compare the relative difficulty and success/failure rate of taking photographs with a digiscoping set-up versus taking photographs with a professional-grade digital SLR camera.

My loaner digiscoping rig consisted of a Leica APO-Televid HD-65mm spotting scope, a Leica D-Lux 4 digital camera, and a bayonet-mount digiscoping adaptor.

My big-rig digital SLR camera is a Canon 30D with a 300mm fixed, image-stabilized, lens.

One of the images above (a female rufous-tailed jacamar) was taken with each set-up. I took these shots moments apart from one another on a trail in Gilpin Trace rainforest on Tobago.

Both images are just as they were taken, no adjustments to color, sharpness, or cropping. Both were exported as jpegs for use in Blogspot.

Can you guess which one was taken with which rig?

Canon 30D Digital SLR image.

Leica digiscoping rig image.

I know from other attempts at digital SLR photography in the deep, dark jungle, that it can be really hard to get good "keeper" photos, especially without the use of a tripod and a bracket-mounted flash unit. When I returned from the Philippines last spring, I was crushed to see how few of my D-SLR images were good enough to keep. Some of this was the result of low-light conditions, some of it was due to "operator error" and some of it was just plain old bad luck.

This is where digiscoping can really pay big dividends for the bird watcher who also likes to snap a few images of birds that happen to cooperate. If a bird sits still for more than a few seconds, it's a candidate for digiscoping. The only downside is that you do need to haul a spotting scope with you in order to digiscope most effectively.

The Leica scopes we were using are the new, top-of-the-line models. Mine was the APO-Televid 65. The coatings and lenses on these scopes gather an incredible amount of light. The focus on them is super-fine. Combining this with the high-end compact Leica cameras we were using, and we had a nearly perfect set-up for digiscoping.

And the images? Well, I can't resist showing off one more digiscoped image from that same day.

Male collared trogon, Gilpin Trace, Tobago, WI.

I'll go deeper into the digi-details in future posts. If you're interested in learning more about digiscoping, there are a number of fine websites and blogs online with all the information you need to get started. If you're more of a hands-on learner, the Midwest Birding Symposium is offering two separate two-hour sessions with many of birding's best digiscopers, including pros from Leica, Zeiss, Swarovski, Nikon, and Eagle Optics. We're calling it The Digiscoping All-stars, and it's free to all registered attendees. Details about the Digiscoping All-stars can be found here.

(Not So) Great Kiskadee

This series of images of a great kiskadee (coughing up a ball of what I assume are insect exoskeleton bits), was taken from the verandah of Asa Wright Nature Centre in Trinidad. In the last image, the bird looks almost relieved, and perhaps a bit embarrassed that the whole episode was captured on camera.

There are days (like today) when I'd like to be able to cough up a huge ball of stuff, if it would make everything better. On second thought, maybe there are better ways to make oneself feel better. Like playing a softball double-header. Think I'll try that instead...