Beautiful Birds

On Saturday 13th January after excellent birding in Roussillac Swamp and a great curry lunch Ken Archambault and I headed to the Sudama Steps on the Oropuche River to look for a couple specialties.  Ken is a bird videographer and has great equipment.  I was using his Swarovski scope to digiscope using both his Sony and my Pentax cameras for this, with excellent results.

                                                                     Spotted Tody-Flycatcher

We very quickly found two of our target species; the Spotted Tody Flycatcher and the Red capped Cardinal.  However Ken only got a couple seconds filming the flycatcher and the cardinal was a juvenile so it did not have the red cap, which is actually bright scarlet.  So we spent the afternoon hunting mostly the flycatcher but also the Cardinal and the Greater Anis.  Along the way we saw lots of great birds like the Red breasted Blackbird and Green Kingfisher which can be seen in my other blog. 

We trudged through mud that ca ked everywhere, of course I was wearing sandals so the mud oozed into my toes.  In the end we got great shots of the flycatchers, and reasonable shots of the anis, though we never saw any more cardinals.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Scarlet Ibis

For the days final act we hear to a mud flat in Laromain.  We find that I have timed it well and tide is falling so the birds are actively feeding.  There are about 20 Scarlet Ibises feeding with Cormorants, Gulls, Pelicans, Sandpipers, Plovers and Ospreys.  We focus in on 5 Ibises that are feeding near to us.  At first they are suspicious of what we are doing but quickly get accustomed to our activity, which is nothing more that standing behind a scope, and move closer, both Ken and I get excellent shots.