Month: January 2014

beginner birder's gull guide cover

Education, Featured, Guides, Main Feed

The Beginner Birder’s Gull Guide

Gulls can be confusing! Here are a few tricks to help tell some of the more common gulls apart.

This gull guide is for adult birds only. Gulls get even more tricky than depicted here, due to the fact that juvenile gulls are completely different colors, usually brown with a black bill. Juvenile identification will take more practice, but start with learning the differences between adult gulls, then focus on the young ones. These are the four main gulls I’ve seen in Southern California:

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Written by: Jeff Mann

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spotted towhee before and after editing

Education, Featured, Guides, Main Feed

Editing Bird Photos: A Beginner’s Guide

You’ve just returned from your first birding trip with a camera full of photos, now you’re ready to go through them all, edit them, and post them for the world to enjoy. Let’s get started! In this guide I’m going to be showing you how to edit bird photos with Adobe Lightroom CS6. This article shows some of the tweaks I make to my photos before posting them online, but won’t go into the technical things that each change does, you’ll see it for yourself as you edit your own photos.

Why Lightroom instead of Photoshop?

There are two main advantages of using Lightroom to edit your photos.

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Written by: Jeff Mann

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Featured, Gear Reviews, Main Feed, Reviews

iPhone 7/8/X and Samsung Galaxy Binocular Adapter Case for Digiscoping

With more and more people carrying cameras with them everywhere, ‘digiscoping’ has increased in popularity. Digiscoping is the practice of pointing a phone camera or digital camera through a pair of binoculars or a spotting scope to increase the zoom and take photos of birds that are really far away.

Trying to do this by holding your phone up to a scope or binoculars is very difficult and tedious. It often requires the cooperation of two people: one to hold the camera and position it properly, and the other to find…

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Written by: Jeff Mann

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Education, Featured, Main Feed

Beginner Birding Mistakes

If you’re thinking about going on your first bird walk or bird outing here are 8 things you should avoid.

1. Wearing Bright Colors

Bright colors like white amplify movement and make you contrast with your surroundings. Subdued earth toned are best. Birds see more color than we do (even UV) so they’ll be sensitive to colors that far contrast what they are used to seeing.

2. Making Loud Noises

Remember to silence your cellphone (if you even have service!), and keep loud talking to a minimum when necessary. If you are trying to get a good shot or spot a bird that’s close-by, you don’t want to scare it away. You’ll eventually get shushed by other birders if you’re a jabber box. This is less important when viewing birds at far distances, like most water birds.

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Written by: Jeff Mann

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