Everywhere that is except for my home town – we generally have 5-6 pairs that are resident in our area – provides for lots of photo opportunities. Being nocturnal though means they do not tend to get up too much during the day. They tend to sulk around under tree’s seeking refuge from the attention of noisy miners and magpies that are only to happy to harass them mercilessly.

F8 1/125TH 1600 ISO -0.7EV

I like to get my images as close as possible in-camera as doing so means you do not need to spend hours in front of the computer processing, with this one all that was done was some selective sharpening to the bird and a little noise reduction.

A little knowledge about your subject will go a long way to helping you get good images – These guys are really skittish around people, very hard to get within 50-100 feet of them before they are off and running (they do fly but only when they really have to) or if threatened will lay on the ground and freeze, blending in with the environment and hopefully avoiding detection.

When Threatened

However they are not in the least concerned about cars – Can drive right up to them, within 10 feet and they could not care less. Of course with the 800mm lens this requires the use of a 36MM extension tube to enable focussing at this distance (Downside of course is the loss of a little light due to the extension tubes). The D3S produces great results at high ISO’S so this is a worthwhile trade off.

Shot on foot, about 60 feet away - clearly aware of my presence

They have been at this site for about 8 weeks now and hopefully might nest here – they tend to feed on insects on the croquet lawns especially during or after rain, which we have had a lot of lately. I visit them every couple of days to see what they are up to – they are very predictable in precisely the same spot every day, does make them easy to find.

Bath-time or Territorial display

Best to time your trip with a low tide in the morning – Chis’s website lists what has been sighted every morning.

LEAVE your super tele lenses at home – you will not need them – a 300mm would be just about perfect, first day I took my 500mm and I was TOO CLOSE – Yes you will be getting that close to the birds. A 200-400 zoom is perfect. Photographic opportunities started before I even got on the boat with a azure kingfisher perched on the rail of the boat next to us.

Make no mistake – this is geared toward PHOTOGRAPHY – Chris knows this river like the back of his hand – lots of highlights…

Black Bitterns

Papuan Frogmouth with chicks

Nesting flycatchers

Azure Kingfishers

Sirateted Heron

Nankeen Night Heron

The boat is open so be sure to take a Hat and sunscreen, I used a monopod although the front of the boat does have a raised section so a tripod could quite comfortably be used – whilst you do get very close to the birds Chris is not stupid – he does not stay long at a nest site, you will get a chance for a few shots before he moves on but as it should be his major concern is for the welfare of the birds. Azure Kingfishers were quite common although with such a large area it was very hard to find a spot were they would continue to return to – so flight shots were hard to come by.

The tides comes in very fast here – in Barret creek  we ventured under a bridge to see a Papuan Frogmouth and chick – we could only stay a couple of minutes otherwise we would not have made it back out under the bridge – when the tide comes in – it really comes in.

Black Bittern - Easily flushed from their hiding places - often seen as they leave

Fronted up again the next morning at 6AM for a second trip – easily the best $55 you will spend, so may birds seen and at such close quarters, You just HAVE to do this trip – Dont miss it!!!!!

Two trips was hardly enough for me – Bit late in the year, prime time according to Chris is October – Guess were I will be come next October

Shining Flycatcher on the nest

Give me waders anyday, Clean backgrounds are fairly easy to come by, throw a rainforest into the mix and you start to have your work cut out for you.

NPS Australia kindly lent me a 500MM F4 for my trip which helped with isolating unwanted background elements.

My base for the trip was Kingfisher Lodge in far north Queensland – temporary home of the magnificent Buff Breasted Paradise Kingfisher (From herein affectionately called Buffy). A striking blue and orange bird with a long white forked tail, it migrates from Papua and New Guinea to this area every year to nest in the termite mounts found here.

*** insert photo of termite mound.

The lodge offers a few different accommodation choices;

Bunkhouse – shared communal showers and cooking shed (Great option if you are on a budget – basic but comfortable)

Units – self contained including shower,toilet and cooking facilities (More expensive but more comfortable to boot)

Camping is also permitted – either way you need to bring ALL your own supplies.

Keith and Lindsay (The hosts) are very friendly and skilled birders, they conduct early morning walks and night spot lighting tours of the grounds – CANT recommend them highly enough!!!!

A short stroll around the grounds on my arrival produced numerous quality photographic opportunities with Buffy and a host of other birds.

F8, 1/40TH, 800 ISO, Manual Flash @ 1/ 8th power

In the heat of the day it can get very hot and humid – the stream at the back of the grounds was a good place to hang out as many species came to bath in the cool waters.

The Noisy Pita was another target species and whilst I did sight this bird on the first day – a decent photograph did not present.In the following couple of days – I did not see him again. The red necked crake could be heard calling at night but never once sighted him.

Lots of nesting activity -mainly high up in the rainforest canopy, Pacific Baza nesting with two chicks, Barn owls and Fig Parrots nesting high up in a dead tree branch in the grounds and Red Browed finches busy building nests all over the place.

Equipment recommendations for this portion of the trip.

2 Bodies – wish I had taken a second body, If  I had I would have set one up to monitor a Buffy nesting site and told it to take a shot every 10 seconds via the intervalometer that is present in the D3.

500mm or longer lens

1.4 & 1.7 x Converters

Flash with better beamer

Remote Video Trigger – could also be handy

Batteries – lots for the flash, used the flash 98% of the time at low power settings.

Tripod and or Monopod – I used the monopod more than the tripod – much more maneuverable and easier to carry – you will be doing quite a lot of walking.

Flight photography is going to be pretty difficult – dark conditions and not a lot of open areas.

Insect Repellant – although it really is not going to help much.

Stay tuned for my next report.

A Australian island halfway between Australia and the Antarctic that is home to some 4 million animals, just one of the unspoiled places in the world – a 3 1/2 day boat trip from New Zealand.
So far I have found only 1 tour company that travels there and ONLY once a year – You cannot stay on the Island (Ship stay only) and can only stay for two days, but ohh my what a wonderful two days it would be.

Now just to figure out how to get there.

Now to just work out how to travel with all my gear.

Looking for a Airline compliant carry on bag that is going to hold a 600VR and other equipment and not look to conspicuous.

Stay tuned.

1. Expandability
You can start off with just one drive if you want to – although you require two drives to take advantage of the BEYONDRAID features. You can add additional drives at any time – without having to remove your data – the storage space grows dynamically whilst still maintaining your data.

2. Drive independent
Mix and match any size drive from any manafacturer.

3. Redundantly Safe
Drobo can ensure your data is safe even if a hard disk fails. You’ll feel safer knowing that if disks do fail, Drobo automatically enters a state of self-healing wherein it relays out your data across the remaining healthy disks and sectors

4. Self-Healing
When Drobo detects a “bad” hard disk, it proactively advises you with a series of warnings ranging from a blinking red LED on its front panel, to pop-up alerts in Drobo Dashboard, to email alerts. What Drobo does next is exceptional. Entering a self-healing mode where it repairs around the bad sector or disk, Drobo will work until it returns to the safest state possible. If Drobo has sufficient time and free capacity (indicated by all lights returning to a solid green state), it can even withstand additional hard disk failures — that’s the power of self-healing

Once I have it in my hot little hands, I will let you know what I think as I set the device up.

From a photography point of view, the site is a little challenging with sunrise and sunset not quite lined up they way you would want it to be. Jan and Feb are also quite bad for horse flies and it is nearly always extremely windy. That said some excellent opportunities for flight photography wind direction permitting. Overcast cloudy days are definitely the best as you don’t have to worry about where the sun is and can shoot to your hearts content.
A big telephoto lens is required to get you in close to the action – I use the Sigma 300-800 zoom and most of the time at 800mm, a 400mm lens is suitable for hand held flight photography.

The image below was created by shooting through the mound of nesting material about 5 feet in front of me, the bird was below me and over the side of the cliff a little.

Nikon D3, Sigmonster @800mm, F5.6, 1/160TH, +0.3EV 800ISO, SB900 with Better Beamer, Manual Flash @-2