Monday, April 24, 2006

Bird-a-thon

Has anyone tried this digiscoping thing? Kelly and I read about it in that book about the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker (lame book) written by one of the birdathon regulars for the cornell team. It seems you look through one lens of your binoculars at the bird and hold your digital camera up to the other lens? Apparently it ranges from that simple to very expensive setups with spotting scopes, attachments to the camera, etc.

Anyways it will be fun to try for this years's birdathon, eh? We gonna meet at High-point state park again? I promide not to attack any bears... but if the park rangers come around and make me dump my booze again I may attack one of them (Whos got my back on THAT one?)

We must formulate a driving strategy to get to different parts of the state this time. And I am gonna make up a huge vat of mac and cheese to keep me going all day.

Moskals, do we have the species list from last time?

5 comments:

  1. Hey Chris - Thanks for posting this.

    Been thinking about it a bit, but things have been OOC crazy here lately, my brain has a tendency to cease functioning at ~ 5:00 every weekday.

    I tried some basic digiscoping up in the dacks this year, took some pics of skiers on whiteface with both our now flooded instant digicam and our SLR. Wasn't too bad! I even think I shot a short video or 2 through the scope. Perhaps when I get home, should my brain not totally shut down, I'll post an example.

    Getting a t-ring to mount the camera directly to the scope prolly only 15.00 or so and would prolly work better (SLR only). I actually need to get a t-ring anyways to mount an SLR to our new flourescent stereoscope here, so I'll get one soon and we can use it for the WSB all we want.

    I'm for more birding less driving, so I think that would either mean more strategy, or reduced geographic area. Preplanned route would prolly make things much easier. I did enjoy high point State park though. I'll bring bacon!

    Yeah - the "list" is still in our car actually. If by list, you mean paper plate. I'll take a high-res pic of that and post it as well. Think about what kind of stuff you want to see - I have the birding in NJ book that I'll start to look through.

    So who all is in for this? C and K, B and J... who else is gonna play?

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  2. Anonymous4:57 PM

    I wanna play...when is it?

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  3. Yay Carrie! It's May 13th.

    The last few years we have met up in Jersey on Friday night in order to start the birding early on Saturday. Then we spend another night in Jersey and head home on Sunday.

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  4. I think we should use the species list to find which cool birds we haven't used yet, and then shoot for areas with appropriate habitat, I'm sure the NJ birding book will be a big help here. In general, it might be good to pick an end of the state and stay north (High point was cool) or stay south (I would love to get to Cape May). Further, I propose we schedule some naptime in after lunch.

    Your paper plate in the car filing system is to be recommended. You knew right where it was didn't you.

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  5. I know it means we are getting old, but I completely agree with the naptime suggestion. If we do stick to one part of the state (which is something we've been discussing too) then lunch and a nap at our campsite is probably a very easy thing to do. Maybe if we take a nap, we might even have the energy to look for some owls or other night birds.

    I think the first year we did this with Bill's former roommates we went to a really neat disturbed forest and saw a cuckoo. It remains one of my favorite indentifications of the WSB. Jon, you were there for that, right?

    Marshy wetlands birds, like rails, would be cool too.

    We'll make sure to get the plate and make it available for discussion.

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