Trogon Photo Tours

This month's newsletter is about 4 days of bird and wildlife photograph I did in Taiwan with fellow photographers Charles (Chuck) Gangas and Jim Heupel.  It was at the end of a 2 week trip to Asia.  I had read that Taiwan was excellent for bird photography and that many of the birds were easily photographed. 

Malayan Night Heron, juvenile photographed November 2017 at Chiayi City Park, Taiwan.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/1250 F5.6, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, handheld.  This was our first stop and this species was one of our targets.  It's normally a very shy and elusive bird in most of it's range in Asia, I had never seen it.  However, for some reason in Taiwan it is now very easy to see in city parks.  According to our guide, this has just developed over the past few years.  It seems to me this is adaptation in action, these birds which were probably previously hunted and/or persecuted, gradually found that now they are left alone in city parks where the watered lawns provide an abundance of worms for them to hunt.  For this shot I lied on the ground to render both the foreground and background out of focus. 

Taiwan Whistling Thrush photographed November 2017 at Firefly Lodge, Taiwan.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/13 F4, iso 1600, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.7, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head.  Our main targets in the blind at Firefly Lodge were Swinhoe's Pheasant and Taiwan Hill Partridge.  We saw and photographed both of them, but both were very skittish.  To make matters worse the area in front of the blind was very dark and there wasn't room to easily use a flash.  The session was almost without any good images but late in the afternoon a few smaller birds came in, including this Taiwan Whistling Thrush (actually this species is not that small at about 11 inches).  The Whistling Thrush proceeded to put on a show, posing for many photos and bathing.  I started out at higher isos but then when I was confident I had some sharp images, I dropped the iso down to improve the image quality.  We were stoked to get some really good images of this hard to see Taiwan endemic. This is full frame. 

White-whiskered Laughingthrush photographed November 2017 at Yushan National Park, Taiwan.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/125 F5, iso 2000, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, 580ex fill flash at -1.3, handheld.  The next morning we ventured up into the mountains of Yushan National Park in pursuit of montane birds.  We found a flock of this species which were pretty friendly, hopping around on the sidewalks of the road that went to the visitor center, they were scavenging left over food at picnic tables the way jays do in North America.  Again, this is a full frame image.  

Flamecrest, male photographed November 2017 in Yushan National Park, Taiwan.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/320 F5, iso 1250, Av mode -0.3, 580ex fill flash at -1.3, handheld.  This is another Taiwan endemic that we were happy to get in Yushan.  As you may have guessed it's in the same genus as our Golden-crowned and Ruby-crowned Kinglets.  While it was a beautiful location we didn't have a very birdy day up in Yushan partially because it was a holiday weekend and the park was packed with people.  We returned to Firefly Lodge and did a bit of night photography getting images of Brown Hawk Owl and the Red and White Giant Flying Squirrel. 

Swinhoe's Pheasant photographed November 2017 at Dasyuehshan Forest Reserve, Taiwan.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/200 F5, iso 1250, Av mode at -0.7, 580ex at -2.0, handheld. While we saw this gorgeous pheasant at Firefly we had to wait to get nice images of it until we got to Dasyuehshan.  This is one of the most beautiful birds I have ever photographed.  To get the iridescence of the feathers well, using flash is very helpful.  I wish I had gotten the whole tail here and I did in many images but I really liked the detail and iridescence I captured in this shot.  As always composing a bird with a very long tail is difficult but I am pretty happy with this.  These birds are regularly fed corn in this location so they are quite tame and will approach people.  There are normally a couple of feeding stations for Mikado Pheasant and Bush-Robins higher up in Dasyuehshan but the road had washed out with the monsoon rains during the summer so those locations weren't accessable. I did bring my Sigma 150-600 and took some images of the pheasants with that as well but I don't like the quality as much as the 500F4 and with the F6.3 largest aperture you lose light in a dark environment.  So one thing I would change the next time I go to Asia would be to bring my 300F4 lens specifically for photographing pheasants as I had the same issue with birds a bit too close in Thailand.  Chuck Gangas used his 300F2.8 a fair bit on this trip. 

Fog and Moutains, Dasyuehshan photographed November 2017.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/125 F18, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, handheld.  There were some beautiful landscapes in the mountains of Taiwan, I used my Sigma 150-600 at times to get a wider perspective but just turned the 500F4 vertical for this shot (and stopped down a lot).  

Taiwan Serow photographed November 2017 at Dasyuehshan Forest Reserve, Taiwan.  Canon 1DX II, Sigma 150-600 Contemporary at 564mm, 1/250 F9, iso 800, manual exposure 580ex flash at 0 compensation, handheld.  The one evening we had at Dasyuehshan we heard that there had been a Serow spotted near the parking lot.  We found the animal and it approached us fairly closely so I was able to make this portrait.  We had a spotlight on it, but other than that it was dark and I was handholding so I used the flash on full power.  In these cases I usually set my manual exposure with a shutter speed close to the highest that will synch with the flash for normal flash power, stop down about 1 stop and use the highest iso will produce virtually no noise.  Carrying around the Sigma 150-600 (or for that matter the 300F4) at night is much easier than lugging around the 500F4 especially if you have to worry about walking on uneven terrain.  But that means the flash is in the hot shoe and the eye gets flashed out.  To repair it in this case I used the lasso tool to select the eye and then selected fill-black to darken the eye.  Lastly I used fill-white to add a bit of a catch light.  There are 6 species of Serow, they only live in Asia and are somewhat related to goats and sheep.  This is the first time I had seen one.  We also photographed Taiwan Macaque and Red and White Giant Flying Squirrel (an amazing species the size of a good sized house cat) during our stay in Taiwan. 

Swinhoe's Pheasant photographed November 2017 at Dasyuehshan Forest Reserve.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/100 F7.1, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering -1.0, 580ex fill flash at -2.0, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head.  I will leave you with one more image of the beautiful male Swinhoe's Pheasant.  In this shot I was trying to get a close up of the amazing iridescent plumage so I set up my tripod and stopped down to F7.1 to get more of the plumage in focus.  We also managed to get full frame shots of Taiwan Hill Partride at this location.   Because of the closure of the upper levels at Dasyuehshan we didn't get as many endemics as I had hoped but we managed nice images of about 8 endemics, a few sub species which are just endemic to Taiwan and some other birds as well as a few nice mammals and some landscapes.  There were a lot of people almost every where we went as it's a very populated island.  The roads are excellent and the drivers very courteous, the food was ok but certainly not as good as Thailand and the accommodations were fine.