Mokka mit Schlag

I’m putting up some quick placeholders here. Time permitting I’ll fill them in with more details and photographs later, but there are so many birds it’s easy to get way behind. Numbers may not add up until I edit this more carefully.

Around 10:30 we tore ourselves away from the raptor migration on top of the tower, descended to the courtyard, and walked down the entrance road. Almost immediately we found a small flock of antbirds and others including Fasciated Antshrike and Red-capped Manakin. 13 more life birds total:

570. Black Hawk-Eagle
571. Slaty-tailed Trogon
572. White-whiskered Puffbird
573. Plain Xenops
574. Cocoa Woodcreeper
575. Fasciated Antshrike
576. Western Slaty-Antshrike
577. Checker-throated Antwren
578. White-flanked Antwren
579. Dot-winged Antwren
580. Southern Bentbill
581. Blue-crowned Manakin
582. White-breasted Wood-Wren

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After breakfast it was back up to the top of the tower for more birds, now including several species of swallows and swifts that had woken up with the insects and a large flight of raptors that was taking advantage of the warming thermals to climb. Seen lifers were:

564. Hook-billed Kite
565. Short-tailed Hawk
566. Swainson’s Hawk
567. Short-tailed Swift
568. Band-rumped Swift
569. Lesser Swallow-tailed Swift

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The scent of eggs pulled us down from the roof for 45 minutes or so around 7:30 AM, but that didn’t stop the birding. During breakfast, we kept running to the windows as new birds appeared. Over scrambled eggs and sausage stew, we managed 11 species including 9 lifers:

565. Long-billed Hermit
566. Purple-crowned Fairy
567. Brown-capped Tyrannulet
568. Red-capped Manakin
569. Lesser Greenlet
570. Green Shrike-Vireo
571. Barn Swallow
572. White-shouldered Tanager
573. Palm Tanager
574. Blue Dacnis
575. Scarlet-rumped Cacique

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Today I woke up at 5:30 AM, grabbed my binoculars, walked upstairs, and ticked off 11 life birds (or 12 if you count a heard only birds) with my morning coffee. The first was a Golden Hooded Tanager. I didn’t get a picture of this one, so how about this shot of number four, a somewhat less impressive but more cooperative Palm Tanager:

Needless to say this wasn’t in the United States. Rather I’m down in Central America at Panama’s Canopy Tower for the next seven days or so.
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Assume ideal conditions:

• Stable Tripod
• Off-camera shutter release
• Excellent focus
• Non-moving target
• ISO 100
• Excellent lighting
• Still air
• Aperture below the camera’s diffraction limit

Is any lens /camera combination going to be able to resolve details that are a pixel’s width apart? If not, how close do the best one’s get?

Of course different cameras have different pixel sizes. Larger cameras usually have larger pixels. So perhaps the answer should be measured in microns. How many microns can the best lenses resolve?

The problem with photographing insects in New York is that I get maybe 4 good months, and then it’s back to birds for 8 months. By the time insect season rolls around again, I’ve forgotten what I figured out last time. So once and for all, let me write this down.

FYI, these settings are all for relatively stationary insects and a 1:1 100mm macro lens. Butterflies and dragonflies (i.e. large flying insects) with a telephoto lens are something else entirely.

Daytime, no flash

• f/8, maybe f/11 for deeper insects
• shutter speed 1/400 s or faster
• ISO 400-1600 as necessary to get the shutter speed up.
• Check your histogram

Consider using a tripod, cable release, and/or reflector.

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