Daily Archives: December 15, 2022

Uganda Edition: Augur Buzzard

Augur Buzzard: In the foothills somewhere between Ishasha Sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park and Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park, Uganda, August 2022 — We drove from Ishasha to Bwindi on the dirt tracks…barely dignified enough to be called roads, though they see a lot of heavy truck traffic headed south and west (or north and east), and stopped in a section of forest to bird for a few miles. Just before we got there, we passed this Augur Buzzard sitting in a tree beside the road as though waiting for us to pass. The Augur Buzzard looks and acts a lot like our Red-tailed Hawk…has a red tail (easier to see in flight as it is short), and at least two color morphs as well. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 160 @ f4 @ 1/500th.

Blue-vented Hummingbird

Blue-vented Hummingbird: Bougainvilla Hotel, San Jose, Costa Rica, December 2022 — It was before sun-up when we met to bird the gardens at the Bouganvilla on the first morning of our trip to Costa Rica this year, and this was pretty much the first bird we encountered. The Blue-vented Hummingbird (formerly Steely-vented Hummingbird) is a common hummer of the dry north-west of the country that just makes it up into the central valley…so the Bouganvilla was the only place we were going to see it on this trip. 🙂 It is a small, energetic hummer that feeds from a variety of flowers. Sony Rx10iv at 517mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications, and multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. Equivalent ISOs 1600, 3200, and 1250 @ f4 @ 1/500th.