Epic birding in the high alps - 2

it's that time again - spring breeding bird surveys are happening all over the northern hemisphere and the alps are no different. except that they need to happen a little later in the high mountains. last year we risked life and limb to do a survey at the beginning of june, which - in hindsight - was probably a very silly thing to do given the meters of snow still covering the mountains in the bird survey region.

So this year we did the survey a little later and were greeted by surprisingly little snow up high. The different conditions also made a dramatic difference to our bird survey results - lots more northern wheatears (Oenanthe oenanthe, Gewöhnliche Steinschmätzer) and markedly fewer Water Pipits calling (Anthus spinoletta, Bergpieper).

Stunning scenery up in the high alps. the weather looked like it was going to turn nasty any minute. it never did. the big mountain is Acherkogel (3008m asl) overlooking Oetz / Oetztal on the other side of the mountain. Notice the faint trace of watermelon alga red in the snow.

My personal birding highlight of the trip was a wonderful male Rock Ptarmigan that showed for us (Lagopus muta, Schneehuhn). I have only ever seen them at a distance and found them to be quite flighty, but evidently spring is the best time to "stumble upon" them like this. And so we did.

Digibinning shots of Rock Ptarmigan on our hike through my Swarovski 8x32 binoculars. Learn more about digibinning here.

We came across alpine marmots fairly often during the day - normally given away by their high pitched "there's a golden eagle overhead" whistle.

Alpine marmot track in the snow

An earwig in the snow at 2500m. No idea how something this small and this exothermic could be active up at these levels right now.

The view from the top of a feather-thin ridge, looking down towards Oetz, Piburgersee and the Inn valley in the background.

Now just at about the tree line, the rocks stop looking rock-coloured and start looking green. This means that entire hillsides are green with these lichen-covered rocks. The photos may not look that stunning, but the in-person views are stunning.

A green lichen-covered rock up close and personal.

A hillside with green lichen-covered boulders.

Great places to practice digiscoping 2 - local zoo

Zoos can provide a great place to practice your digiscoping techniques as it provides you with countless opportunities to get close to more people-accustomed animals. They tend to sit still for longer, move slower, and not be as far away as in a wild situation. But zoos also provide a number of challenges in getting decent photos.

Wire as a background

bird is too close to the [unnatural-looking] wire background. northern wheatear/Steinschmäzer

Because one is in an unnatural setting, it is very easy for the image to look like it was taken in an unnatural setting. Despite the natural rocks in the Northern Wheatear image, above, the wire background destroys the image. The trick is to:

• minimize the distance between you and the bird
• maximize the amount of space between the bird and the wire fence, and
  
• reduce the depth of field by using the largest aperture possible (smallest f number). This will also give you the fastest shutter speed, which is very useful when digiscoping birds.

get more distance between the bird and the fence, reduce depth of field. northern wheatear/Steinschmäzer

If you manage to get the photographic subject in a good position, don't be shy to snap off lots of photos and to play with the settings to create an acceptable image. In the second digiscoped photo of the northern wheatear, above, the bird is far enough away from the wire that the wire falls out of the depth of field and is not visible at all. [I have been really struggling to get photos of northern wheatears in the mountains - it takes a huge amount of walking to get to a good spot and when there, there is no place to hide, so they tend to stay distant. and, at the moment there is just too much snowin the Tirolean Alps to find them on their breeding grounds].

a shadowed/darker wall and reduced depth of field can produce a matt black background. Egyptian vulture/Schmutzgeier Neophron percnopterus

Another possiblitity to deal with wire backgrounds is to take advantage of darker surfaces in the cage. This egyptian vulture's cage was 95% wire and had a lot of light shining on it - making for a very difficult background. By moving about a bit, I managaed to put a shadowed concrete wall behind the vulture. Because of a very short depth of field, the concrete wall came out as black, making for a rather appealing series of photos.

black background effect using a shadowed wall and a short depth of field. Little Bittern/Zwergdommel Ixobrychus minutus

I found a spot to which this Little Bittern kept on returning. There was pleasant side lighting (although a bit burnt out as it was just after mid-day), with some reflection from the pond, and a shadowed concrete wall and log behind the bird. I was only about 5 meters from the little bittern, and the wall was about 1m behind the bird so, using a very short depth of field I managed to replicate the black background effect.

Wire between the camera and the subject

photographing through a sunlit wire fence produces a washed-out grey. Eurasian Lynx/Luchs Lynx lynx

I really wanted a couple of Lynx photos (despite the poor light conditions), more happy-snappy photos than anything else, but there was always a great big wire fence between the camera and the [beautiful] animal. The result was a washed-out grey across the images. This can be ameliorated in a number of ways:

• try to find a patch of fence on to which the sun is not shining. A shadowed fence poses far fewer problems (the Egyptian vulture shots were taken through shadowed wire)
  
• if the wire mesh is fairly large, then adjusting the position of the digiscoping setup slightly may help
• if you do have washed-out areas then try to keep these off the subject (a washed-out background is less disturbing than a foreground)
• use a short depth of field with both the camera and the photographic subject far away enough from the fence that the wire is completely out of focus.
  

adjusting the camera position slightly meant that I could shoot through the wire mesh. Eurasian Lynx/Luchs Lynx lynx

Keep the photos tight around the subject
Simply put, the more space you have around your subject, the more chance something unnatural is going to creep in to your image. This could be a garden hose on the floor you never saw, or even something as subtle as animal tracks and worn logs that look like they are in a cage.

it is hard to get a whole bird shot of a large bird/animal without introducing unnatural elements. Bearded Vulture/Bartgeier Gypaetus barbatus

By keeping the image tight around this Bearded Vulture (Lammergeier), and by restricting the depth of field, I managed to exclude many of the cage elements. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get a full animal shot of such a large bird when it is in some sort of enclosure as it is almost impossible then to exclude all unnatural elements (without photoshopping, of course).

keep background simple, esp for large birds. Northern Bald Ibis/Waldrapp Geronticus eremita

For larger birds in particular, try to find rather plain, uninteresting background with as few artificial structures as possible. The cliff behind the Northern Bald Ibis looks artificial when in focus, but when it is out of the depth of field, it just becomes a rather natural-looking rock structure.

Patience
The animals and birds might not be wild, but they are also not going to always be the most cooperative for digiscoping/photographing.

sometimes even loads of patience does not pay off. if that is the case, you might as well just relax and enjoy the pretty animals. Eurasian Lynx/Luchs Lynx lynx

I found this Lynx in a tree in what looked like a stunning position - the green foliage highlighted the soft brown hues of her fur, and the sunlight peeking through the branches would have made a wonderful image. I sat. And I sat. And I sat.
Eventually, I decided that if she were anything like our house cat then she would not be moving that head for quite a while. I never got the shot.

One thing that stood out to me about the other visitors to the zoo on this sunny spring weekend day, was that when they wanted to take a photo, they made all manner of noise to try to attract the animal's attention. "Does that golden eagle over there look like a dog to you?", I wanted to ask.
I am sure our mere presence and smell is disturbing enough, without us actively trying to annoy them.

I am far from a fan of zoos. In fact I really don't like the idea of any animal being kept in a cage (yes, I know I worked for a captive-breeding based reintroduction program of scarlet macaws, but even that was hard). The cages and enclosures always just seem too small. After 18 months in Tirol, I finally made it across to Innsbruck's zoo: the Alpenzoo (which only has native species!). And, as zoos go, it was actually quite nice, and it was apparent that a concerted effort is being put in to improve the conditions for the animals.

So, if you are looking to pique your digiscoping performance, you might want to think about somewhere like a zoo, or the local duck pond.

Happy digiscoping
Dale Forbes

Diginocking in the mountains

After last weeks' fun taking photos through my ELs, I decided to do a little more of it this morning. Last night we had taken a hike back in to the mountains to a most gorgeous of spot: Solsteinhaus, a hut set way back in the mountains on the edge of my favorite mountain in the whole wide world (Große Solstein - on the right in the first photo).


I was admittedly lazy in getting up this morning, but when I got out there was still something to be seen. The Alpine Accentors were not very vocal at all and we ended up playing an interminable game of hide and go seek. I was not the one hiding. No useful photos there.

But the Ring Ousels were far more obliging. Weary, but far more interested in singing from the "tree" tops to be too worried about me. I don't have the little Snap Shot Adapter anymore - it was borrowed - so these were all taken by just holding my camera to the binoculars. As you can see, I am still learning how to focus effectively.

I also spent some time trying to get some shots of the Crossbills, but they were proving elusive:

catching one taking off was completely by accident:


Here is a habitat shot:
Mostly grassland with some stunted trees (mostly below head hight). Also about were some Grey Wagtails, Wheatears, a couple of ravens and a few other little bits and pieces.

A couple of digibinned insects:

This digibinning thing really is a whole lot of fun. and it means that I can still take bird photos even if my huge digiscoping setup is a home.

Happy birding
Dale

Epic birding in the high alps

Last week Andy (Schwarzenberger) and I went on a most epic of bird walks.

Well, maybe that does not completely capture the experience; "bird walk" for me conjures up images of late morning strolls, twenty 50-somethings, compact Nikon binoculars and botanical gardens where chit chatting is somewhat more important than finding birds.

Last week's walk was a far cry from duck ponds and park benches. We left the Kühtai pond (Sellraintal) at 5am and headed up one of the valleys to the South West. Our mission: to do a bird survey up in to the higher Alps. Kühtai itself is at 2020m asl and is one of my favorite ski resorts, but there is almost no snow left in the valley. As we headed up the valley, we found more and more snow. But still, the Great Tits were out and about, as usual, making a lot of noise. But it was the Ring Ousels that got my attention. And there were lots of them about. Nuthatches, Wrens and Bramblings added to the morning chorus.

Near the edge of the tree line, the bird diversity dropped substantially, but there were certainly lots of, taking advantage of the open land and melting snow. Everywhere we turned our ears, the pipits were out calling.


A little way up the path we started to get in to deeper and then deeper snow, and pretty soon there was only snow and boulders to be seen. It was way up here in the snow that we picked up our first Alpine Accentors (Alpenbraunelle) and Wheatears. Chattering away, the wheatears buzzed from boulder to boulder showing off their gorgeous colours - what a sight!

Early on, I tried my hardest to get some good views of the alpine accentors. Little did I know that as we neared the peaks/ridges we would be seeing them up close (but to be honest, at that stage I was more interested in not falling off a cliff or disappearing in an avalanche than studying pretty little birdies). Anyhow, these alpine accentors truly have interesting sex lives. For those of you with a sesquipedalian penchant, their breeding system is called polygynandry, in which about 3-5 males defend a group territory that encompasses 2-3 spatially separated females (cf. Heer 1996 Journal of Ornithology 137/1). Despite a dominance structure, they are highly promiscuous and offspring can be sired by numerous males (three males in Heer 1996!). Individuals feed in very loose associations (or completely independently) and dominant males tend to dedicate more time to feeding than subordinate ones (Janiga & Movotna 2006 Ornis Fennica 83). Not surprisingly, the alpine accentors tend to choose a diet rich in lipids during the winter, presumably for their high energy content (Ibid).

In this higher zone, we also came across Alpine Choughs, Snow Finches, and calling Ptarmigans. The Alpine Marmots also kept us entertained as they ran about through the snow and boulders.

Along the highest ridges, the going was steep, we had no idea where the path was, and were trudging through waist-deep snow. The fog was thick, but we were pretty sure there was a good view from up there. At some stage we decided to throw caution in to the wind and just slide down the snow slope on our bums and try to find the trail again at a lower altitude.



It seems that many high alpine species are adversely affected by ski-pistes; either through disturbance and stress (Arlettaz, Patthey, Baltic, Leu, Schaub, Palme & Jenni-Eiermann 2007 Proceedings of the Royal Society B 274/1614), or the reduction in the quality of open habitats (Rolando, Caprio, Rinaldi & Ellena 2007 Journal of Applied Ecology 44/1). Many of these detrimental effects can be minimized by only skiing on or close to pistes, creating "no skiing" wilderness areas, and by the careful construction of pistes (low-invasiveness, only using heavy equipment where absolutely necessary, and focusing only on the removal of potentially dangerous boulders).