Ciblek Mania

During the 10th annual Verde Valley Birding & Nature Festival in Cottonwood, Arizona (an event I highly recommend) I lead a trip, gave a talk, and did a bit of birding on my own. And I did this without the weight of a "real" camera hanging from my shoulder. My big lens has issues, it appears, and needs to be fixed.

With my Canon 300mm lens sent off for rehab, I've been limited to digiscoping. Well, perhaps 'limited' is the wrong word. Given relatively cooperative birds, digiscoping can result in some wonderful images. I'm using a Leica D-Lux 4 digital camera with a Leica digital adapter, and a Leica 85mm spotting scope. It's a pretty user-friendly set up, I have to say.

Digiscoping and birding go together really well. A professional photographer friend of mine once told me (and repeated this many times since) that you can either go birding or you can be a bird photographer, but it's almost impossible to do both well at once. Bird photographers, like my friend, tend to find a cooperative bird or spot and work it for an extended period. Birders can lose patience with this because they may want to move on to the next birdy spot.

Then there's the equipment. On my recent trip to Guyana most of us had all of our birding gear (binocs, guide, scope, small camera, etc) plus a big camera or two to take "serious" photos. After a dingle day in the field I stopped carrying my big Canon 30D with the 300mm lens and focused on digiscoping. The couple of serious photographers on the trip each had multiple cameras, lenses, plus their birding binocs, and a backpack for all of this. They eventually stopped carrying their scopes since I had mine. Not only was this melange of gear physically challenging for us, it was hard to keep it from knocking together, or from taking a beating from the climate and setting: dust, rain, humidity, heat, lack of power.

I'll write more extensively about digiscoping in Guyana in a future post.

Being without my big lens has felt somewhat liberating. In my two most recent festivals, in Arizona, and at the New River Birding Festival in West Virginia, I was solely digiscoping, which fits better with being a field trip leader, too, since I always tote and operate the spotting scope. After everyone has seen a bird in the scope, if the bird obliges, I snap a few shots with my digiscoping camera, which I carry on my hip in a small pouch.

If you'd like to find out more about digiscoping from one of the pros, I suggest you go to a birding festival where the field reps from the major optics companies often hold seminars on this subject. If you get a good camera/adapter/spotting scope arrangement, digiscoping is so easy it will surprise you.
I'll stop there for now, and drop a little Arizona digiscoped eye candy on you.

Bird watching has finally arrived as a viable market segment of society. Birders are consumers but it's only been in the past decade or so that the business world outside of our niche market has begun taking an interest. They have done so by creating products specifically aimed at bird watchers, and some of these products have really taken off. Witness the success of the iBird family of applications, one of which Apple featured in its national iPhone ads during the last season of "American Idol."

And then there is the birding clothing realm. Hats, vests, pants, coats, shirts, gloves, boots, and socks are among the clothing items designed, manufactured, and marketed specifically with birders in mind. But until now, it was impossible to dress yourself (or someone you love) in complete birding clothing from head to toe.

There was no birding underwear.


Bird Boxers.
About 15 years ago I had the idea to produce a line of boxer shorts with birds on them, but I could never find the right combination of elements to make the magic happen. Now that's all changed, and the first two Bird Boxers designs are rolling off the manufacturing line as you read this.

The artwork, by the multi-talented Julie Zickefoose, is screen-printed and depicts an American woodcock (on the black boxers) and a hairy woodpecker (on the gray boxers) at or very near their actual sizes. In fact it even says "Actual Size" below the birds' names. The boxers are a very nice and comfy cotton-poly blend.

If there is a more perfect holiday gift for the boxer-wearing bird watcher in your life, I'm not sure what it is.

You can find more information about Bird Boxers here at this link. And you can place your order at this link, or by calling us at 800-879-2473.

Yes we have more ideas in the pipeline.
And yes, we are working on some items for women. More on that later.

Happy holidays!