Colorado digiscoping

Bill Schmoker @ Littleton, CO digiscoping seminar

Had a great time at the recent Colorado digiscoping seminar held in Littleton, CO. The hosts and guests were great, we had wonderful dealer support... Unfortunately, the weather was less than great. On the night prior to the event, the first winter storm rolled in and temps in the teens turned rain to snow! Too cold for this FL boy. Fortunately, the Littleton, CO crowd is a tough lot and many showed to learn a bit about digiscoping.

female American Kestrel, digiscoped during seminar w/ Leica APO Televid scope

After a classroom session, we made our way out toward duck blinds where participants practiced on the many Wigeon and other waterfowl that were obscured in the fog-covered water. The overcast gray hung with us all day making the images further dull unfortunately, but I think most got the idea of how the basics work and should be able to get better images when the sun returned.

immature Black-crowned Night-Heron digiscoped October 2009

The female American Kestrel at top was sitting on a wire just behind the nature center upon returning from the duck blind. A cold, young Black-crowned Night-Heron sat along a stream edge in the image above. This was taken during the second (cooler) afternoon walk after the wind had picked up making digiscoping even less enjoyable. The organizers did a great job with every aspect of the event, but I guess the weather was out of their control! :)

Black-billed Magpie digiscoped @ road-edge, Littleton, CO 10/2009

The following morning was still cold and gray but I managed to enjoy some of the local bird species just outside the hotel. Black-billed Magpies were very abundant and it was nice to be able to study plumage variation in Lesser Goldfinch as above. All that I saw in CO, appeared consistently different than those along the California coast from weeks earlier. I may have to look into some of the known subspecific variations.

Lesser Goldfinch digiscoped with Leica APO Televid & D-Lux 4 camera