Trogon Photo Tours

July 2017 - This month's newsletter is about photographing birds on the Big Island of Hawaii.  My family and I spent 12 days there last month and although it was largely a beach and family vacation I did do a bit of bird photography.  This articles discusses locations, species and conditions relating to bird photography there. 

Hawaii Amakihi photographed July 2017 near the top of Kaloko Drive, Kona-Kailua area, Hawaii.   Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1.4x 1/160 F6.3, iso 1250, fill flash at -1.3, handheld.  After a few days of snorkeling and beach time I decided it was time to set out and try to photograph some of Hawaii's native birds.  I had the book "The Birdwatchers Guide to Hawaii" by Rick Soehren.  It is a bit dated being about 20 years old but I found all the locations I checked the information was still pretty accurate and useful.  We were staying in a time share on the Kona Coast which is a long way from the well known mountain regions known to hold most of the endemic birds.  But Rick's book listed this location which is only a 30 minute drive from the resorts of the Kona coast.  Kaloko road gets you up to elevations around 5,000 feet on the slopes of Mt. Hualalai.  Here I found large numbers of this species and the Apapane, the 2 most common Hawaiian honeycreepers on the main island. I photographed this species often on the trip but this was my favorite image which was taken on the first day of bird photography. 

Apapane photographed July 2017 near the top of Kaloko Drive, Kona area, Hawaii.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1.4x 1/1600 F8, iso 800, handheld.  This is the other species of Hawaiian honeycreeper which is pretty common still on the main island.  While the Amakihi could be pished in and was relatively tame and easy to photograph, this species is very shy and tends to stay in the canopy making it quite a bit more difficult to photograph.  I think part of the reason it is shy is that it and some of the other honeycreeper species were historically hunted for their plumes.  This is much of the reason the large black honeycrepper the Oo became extinct.  The bird is feeding on the flowers of the ohi tree, which is an endemic Hawaiian tree that grows extremely well on lava flow soil, this is the main food source for most of the honeycreepers in Hawaii.  Unfortunately a fungus which kills the tree has made it's way to the islands and is now killing some of the trees.  This Kaloko Drive area is a public road but it is all private property off the road.  There are houses up in this area on acreage.  So if you go up there do your bird photography along the side of the roads, there are some roads near the top which turn off to the left which can be productive as well as near the top of the main road.  The last turn to the left I found to be quite good.  I would just park at the top of the road and slowly walk down the sides of the roads.  Although there are many no trespassing signs in people's yards etc I never had anyone tell me I shouldn't be up there.  It is also the only area that I saw Hawaiian Hawk, which I saw several times but never got a satisfactory image (only a mile up in the sky) although I did have a few low unexpected fly bys. 

Nene (Hawaiian Goose) photographed July 2017 at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/250 F5, iso 1250, handheld lying on the ground.  We did spend one night up near Hawaii Volcanoes National Park to see the volcano at night.  I went in early the next morning in search of honeycreepers and found a small group of Nene that I spent about a half an hour photographing.  They were walking along one of the roads.  Since it was early there weren't many people or cars in the park yet so I pulled over and by laying down I was able to get a natural looking image of one of the geese by the side of the road. 

Nene photographed July 2017 Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/500 F5.6, iso 1000, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.7, handheld.  I followed the group of geese as they walked around a side road and a parking lot.  As I was photographing them the sun came up and provided some nice lighting.  In this shot the Nene's head was lit up by the sun, while the green background was still in the shade.  I dialed in -0.7 to account for the dark background but it wasn't enough so I had to reduce the exposure another half a stop in post processing to recover detail on the neck. 

Kilauea Volcano photographed July 2017, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.  Canon 1DX II, Sigma 150-600 at 163mm, 1/4 F6.3, iso 3200, Av mode, evaluative metering -1.0, 580ex flash with Better Beamer.  While I am not a landscape photographer I couldn't resist trying to photograph the Kilauea crater.  I was using the flash to illuminate the foreground in some other images and surprisingly I found that even though the background was a long way out the flash did affect the coloration of the mountains and sky in the background making them much bluer, while the images without flash were much darker gray/blackish in the background.  It was neat to see the volcano, what you are seeing in this photo is the glow of the molten cone on the sides of the crater wall.  Some nights it spews lava into the air, we heard that a few days before we were there it was quite active.  The best strategy if you have a flexible schedule is to call the volcano hotline each day to see how active it is, if it is active then reserve a room in the Volcano, Hawaii area that day and head up there. 

Gray Francolin photographed July 2017 Kona Coast Resort, Hawaii.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1.4x 1/2500 F8, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, handheld lying on my stomach.  In the lowlands and around our resort there were a lot of birds but almost all were introduced species.  Toward the end of our trip I purchased a bag of bird seed and spread it out on the lawn behind our room.  Common seed eating birds at our resort included Java Sparrow, Saffron Finch, Yellow-billed Cardinal, Zebra Dove and Common Myna.  I didn't bring along my set up equipment so I wasn't prepared to take images on set up perches but this Gray Francolin was one of the species which came in to the seed I put out.  By lying on my stomach I was able to make the image look more natural than a shot just taken on the lawn.  Besides this species down low higher up there were lots of Kalij Pheasants and Erckel's Francolins both of which I photographed.  These game birds were introduced for hunting but have established good sized populations on the island. 

Red-billed Leiothrix photographed off of Kaloko Drive, Kona, Hawaii, July 2017.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1.4x 1/160 F6.3, iso 1250, fill flash at -1.3, handheld.  My original plan on our last day was to go up to Mauna Kea and look for Iiwi and other native birds but it didn't pan out with my family resposibilities so instead I took one last trip up Kaloko Drive to try and improve on my Apapane photos.  It was very foggy at the top so after a bit I started the drive down.  I took a side road quite a bit farther down the mountain and pulled over to photograph a Kalij Pheasant.  When I did so I noticed a large flock of birds in the trees nearby.  This Leiothrix responded to my pishing, coming close enough for me to get a reasonable shot.  While it's a beautiful bird, introduced cage birds which have escaped and started populations like this species have contributed greatly to the decline of native species.  The reason being is that they brought avian malaria which has been devastating to many of the native Hawaiian species which don't have immunity to it the way the introduced birds do.  For that reason many of the native species now only live about 5,000 feet - above where the mosquitoes can get to them.  The Hawaii Amakihi and Apapane are 2 species which seem to have developed immunity to avian malaria and can therefore be found at lower elevations. Hopefully the few species of native Hawaiian birds which are left can continue to survive in the higher reaches of the islands. 

All in all I found bird photography (at least for the native landbird species) to be quite challenging on Hawaii.  I also visited the Palila reserve on Mauna Kea with very little success and did some hiking on Mauna Loa.  What I would say though is that if you are seeking out these native species you are often doing so in spectacular scenery so bring a landscape lens as well.  I didn't take many landscape images but I certainly enjoyed the beautiful landscapes as I was hiking and trying to find those native honeycreepers.