Trogon Photo Tours

December 2018 - This month's newsletter is about photographing birds at Bosque de Paz Lodge in Costa Rica and areas nearby.  Bosque de Paz is a lovely birding lodge with nice rooms and very good cuisine.  It's located in the Central Highlands of Costa Rica at 4,700 feet. 

Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/640 F4, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0.  One of the first birds we saw at Bosque de Paz was the Black Guan.  Large numbers of this bird came in to their feeders and this large perch, which was reasonably good for this species was right above the feeder.  It was the only location we saw this species.  As far as the techs, this was taken handheld wide open.  At this point it was raining lightly and you can see a bit of that in the background.  Besides the guans this grain feeder attracted a lot of Common Chlorospingus, a few brush finches and several mammals. 

Canon 1DX II, 500F4, 1/1250 F5, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.7, handheld.  This White-nosed Coatimundi was one of 3 species of mammals which made visits to the feeders at Bosque de Paz.  Central American Agouti also visited during the day and we were treated to a night a sighting and photography opportunity of Lowland Paca, which visited the feeders in the evening.  This was the first time myself or any of the group had seen Paca so it was very exciting.  I tried to get as low as possible to photograph this guy but he was walking down a hillside and approaching me rapidly so this was the best angle and image that I managed.  I dialed in a bit of negative exposure compensation to hold the whites here. 

Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/160 F5.6, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, Canon 580ex flash at -2.0, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head.  Common Chlorospingus was one of the most common species at Bosque de Paz, visiting both the fruit feeders and the corn feeder.  One challenge we overcame was that the fruit feeders were large, unsightly metal platforms without good places for the birds to perch next to them.  So Jeff Munoz and I rigged up some mossy perches and placed them around the feeders which provided us nice perches with good clean backgrounds.  Note that in this image the rain streaks are much longer than in the image with the Black Guan.  The main reason for this is I shot this at a much slower shutter speed 1/160 vs 1/640 for the guan.  I was able to do this because I was on a tripod instead of handholding and in addition to get the lower speed I dropped my iso from 1250 to 800. 

Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/320 F5.6, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, Gitzo Tripod and Wimberley head.  The Prong-billed Barbet visited the fruit feeder on a regular basis.  This image was taken just 6 minutes after the previous image of the Chlorospingus.  I think its worthwhile contrasting the images.  The main reason the rain streaks are much smaller is the faster shutter speed.  While the bird activity was quite good we were hit with wind gusts up to 40 miles per hour and persistent rain which was very unusual given it was supposed to be the dry season.  So we huddled under the lodge eaves to try and keep dry while photographing the feeders.  

Violet Sabrewing, Canon 5D3 300F4 1/200 F20, iso 1000, trigger, slave flashes.  This image was taken at Catarata del Toro which is an area about 40 minutes from Bosque de Paz that is at a bit lower altitude.  While the multi-flash hummingbird photography was good at Bosque de Paz it was even better at Catarata del Toro.  This is a restaurant above a hiking trail to some waterfalls. The hummingbird activity was amazing there and Jeff had arranged that we could do multi-flash there.  This large hummer was my favorite in Costa Rica.  This was taken on Jeff's setup and was taken at a higher iso than is usually necessary for my setup as his Yongnuo slave flashes don't seem to have as much output as my Nikon SB-26's.  His setup is nice in that you don't need a flash to trigger his slave flashes, you use a trigger which is placed in the hotshoe. 

Purple-throated Mountain Gem Canon 5D3 300F4 1/200 F14, iso 1000, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head, slave flashes.  This is one of the prized hummingbirds of Costa Rica, he didn't come in very often but the whole group managed to get him once or twice as he came in and perched on the multi-flash flower at Catarata del Toro. There were a few of these guys at Bosque de Paz but the males didn't come in to the multi-flash there.

Black-bellied and Coppery-headed Hummingbirds Canon 5D3 300F4 1/200 F16, iso 400, 5 Nikon SB-26 slave flashes at 1/16 power triggered by Canon 580ex at 1/64 power.  I was happy to get these 2 endemic hummingbird species together in the same image at Catarata del Toro.  Since this was on my setup I was able to use a much lower iso than the previous images. 

Banaquits photograhed at Catarata del Toro Canon 5D3, 300F4 1/200 F20, iso 500, 5 Nikon SB-26 slave flashes at 1/16 power, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head.  Hummingbirds aren't the only birds that come in to drink sugar water, numerous Banaquits perched on our flowers as well. I caught the bottom one a little bit low in the frame but I liked the 2 poses here.  Because the flashes are producing all of the light you can stop down a great deal more than you would doing regular photography. 

Brown Jay, juvenile photographed at Catarata del Toro.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/800 F5.6, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, 580ex fill flash at -2.0, handheld.  They also put out some fruit for other species at the restaurant there.  I was happy to see and photograph this species for the first time.  It's a regular there, some tanager species come in as well.  It was a foggy, misty day so I used some fill flash to try and get some punch in the colors, although I also had to increase the contrast in post processing. In conclusion, Bosque del Paz is a lovely lodge to spend a few nights and visiting the nearby Catarata del Toro is certainly worthwhile.