Daily Archives: February 4, 2022

Snowy Cotinga (wee and far)

Snowy Cotinga: La Selva Biological Station (OTS), Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica — I offer this only as a “good bird”…it is certainly not a good photo…but then the bird was at least a third of a mile away, across the full width of the Sarapique River valley. It was totally invisible to the naked eye, and, I could not, in fact, see it in the camera viewfinder at 600mm equivalent either. I had to find the spot where it was sitting with my binoculars (after looking through Edwin’s, our guide) spotting scope where I could actually see the bird…and then take a photo of that spot…rather then the bird itself. I could then use full magnification on the camera’s LCD screen to see if I had the bird in the frame. I managed to do it twice out of a dozen tries, and this is the better of the two snots. It is a radical crop. What you see here is only about a 10th of the frame, which would make this the equivalent of photo taken with a 6000mm lens, or what we saw through the guide’s spotting scope. This bird sometimes hangs out where the road into La Selva leaves the main road, on our side of the valley, but the day we visited, this was the best we could do. I have no idea how Edwin spotted it way over there…wee and far…but he did. This is not one of the bigger cotingas…”thrush-sized” so it was indeed wee as well as far. Of course it is a bird of the high canopy so we might not have gotten much better views even if it had been on our side of the river. It just gives me something to look for on our next visit to La Selva. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent (cropped to 6000mm as above). Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 200 @ f4 @ 1/500th.