I still vividly remember the excitement of getting my first digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR). The freedom to take hundreds of images revolutionised my birding as well as my photography. Over the past 16 years, photography has become an indispens able part of my ornithological toolkit, giving novel insights into birds’ moult, diet and other behaviours, as well as improving my ID skills. Like many bird photographers, I have spent a small for tune investing in the steady increase in image resolution and frame rate in the quest for the perfect camera. After a week with the Canon R6, I feel as ex cited as when I got my first Canon D10.
In the early 2000s, the debate was whether digital would replace slide film. I have some useless slides from a stunning day on Tristan peak in 2004 because publishers at the time still favoured transparencies. How quickly things changed! The past few years have seen a similar revolution brewing – the switch from DSLRs to mirrorless cam eras. Mirrorless is nothing new – every pointandshoot camera is mirrorless. The disadvantage for bird photography has always been the lag between the sensor and the viewfinder. Until recently, you couldn’t hope to track a bird in flight with an electronic viewfinder (EVF). The mirror system in an SLR camera allowed you to literally see the image going to the sensor.
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EXPLORING NEW HORIZONS
Keith Barnes, co-author of the new Field Guide to Birds of Greater Southern Africa, chats about the long-neglected birding regions just north of the Kunene and Zambezi, getting back to watching birds and the vulture that changed his life.
footloose IN FYNBOS
The Walker Bay Diversity Trail is a leisurely hike with a multitude of flowers, feathers and flavours along the way.
Living forwards
How photographing birds helps me face adversity
CAPE crusade
The Cape Bird Club/City of Cape Town Birding Big Year Challenge
water & WINGS
WATER IS LIFE. As wildlife photographer Greg du Toit knows better than most.
winter wanderer
as summer becomes a memory in the south, the skies are a little quieter as the migrants have returned to the warming north. But one bird endemic to the southern African region takes its own little winter journey.
when perfect isn't enough
Egg signatures and forgeries in the cuckoo-drongo arms race
Southern SIGHTINGS
The late summer period naturally started quietening down after the midsummer excitement, but there were still some classy rarities on offer for birders all over the subregion. As always, none of the records included here have been adjudicated by any of the subregion's Rarities Committees.
flood impact on wetland birds
One of the features of a warming planet is increasingly erratic rainfall; years of drought followed by devastating floods. Fortunately, many waterbirds are pre-adapted to cope with such extremes, especially in southern Africa where they have evolved to exploit episodic rainfall events in semi-arid and arid regions. But how do waterbirds respond to floods in areas where rainfall - and access to water - is more predictable? Peter Ryan explores the consequences of recent floods on the birds of the Western Cape's Olifants River valley.
a star is born
It’s every producer’s dream to plan a wildlife television series and pick the right characters before filming.
