Trogon Photo Tours

This month's newsletter is about photographing the endangered wildlife of the Chaparri Conservation Area and Chaparri Ecolodge.  At Chaparri through rehabilitation programs and conservation they are helping two endangered species survive and recover, The White-winged Guan and the Spectacled Bear.  The area is also refuge to a fair number of Tumbesian endemics some of which are near-threatened like the Tumbes Tyrant and the Sechuran Fox.  The Tumbesian region being Southwest Ecuador and Northwest Peru.  

White-winged Guan photographed at Chaparri Conservation Area by Nate Chappell November 2016, Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/1600 F6.3, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, handheld.  Our first morning at Chaparri Ecolodge we planned to visit the rehabilitation pen of the Spectacled Bears at feeding time.  Our guide let us know that there would also be many White-winged Guans feeding along with the bears which were attracted by the food (vegetarian mostly) put out for the bears.  There were a couple of challenges involved with photographing the guans, one was getting a clean background, the other was that feeding time was about 9am, it was a sunny day and the light had gotten a bit harsh by that time.  This was one of my favorite flight shots of the guans despite the busy background.  This species had been thought to be extinct from the late 1800's until 1977 when it was rediscovered in a remote valley in Northern Peru.  We saw dozens of birds near the Spectacled Bear enclosure.  Considering the total world population of the species is estimated at only 200 mature individuals, we were seeing a large percentage of the world population right there.  Chaparri is working on repopulating another valley in the area with these birds. 

White-winged Guan photographed at Chaparri Conservation Area by Nate Chappell November 2016, Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/2500 F6.3, iso 800, manual exposure, handheld.  This bird was flying down to the ground from a bush, I wish I had brought an intermediate zoom on this shoot as sometimes like this one, I felt like I was too close.  At this point I had changed to a manual exposure as the birds were sometimes up against a bright blue sky and sometimes against the vegetation.  I had also increased my shutter speed to darken the exposure a bit as I was getting blinkies on the whites of some of the previous shots. 

White-winged Guan photographed at Chaparri Conservation Area by Nate Chappell November 2016, Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/1250 F6.3, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, handheld.  While I was hoping to get some nice perched shots of the birds as well as flying, the lighting angle on the perches they were using wasn't very good so the shots were mediocre.  But I was happy to have this one bird very close to me on the ground and I managed to get low and get some head shots.  When working a subject like this I try to get as many different types of images as possible including if it's feasible to get close enough to my subject to take a portrait of the head and shoulders. 

Spectacled bear cub photographed in Chaparri Conservation Area rehabilitation enclosure by Nate Chappell November 2016, Canon 5D3 28-135 at 132mm 1/1000 F8, iso 640, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.7, handheld.  This cub put on quite a show for us. The Spectacled Bear is considered vulnerable by the ICUN with an estimated worldwide population of 6,000 to 10,000 individuals.  This is the only bear in South America. 

Spectacled Bear, wild photographed November 2016 by Nate Chappell at Chaparri Ecological Reserve.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/1250 F7.1, iso 400, Av mode, evaluative metering +0.7, handheld.  Near the end of our shoot we turned around from the captive enclosure and to our surprise and delight there was an adult male Spectacled Bear perched up on top of a tree.  Apparently the captive bears attract some wild, perhaps rehabilitated bears, to see what is going.  It was an exciting way to end the morning.  Because there was plenty of light and I knew this was going to be a fair bit of a crop, I dropped my iso to 400 which is about the lowest I typically go with wildlife photography, unless I am shooting artistic blurs or something like that.  I added light to bring out detail in the black plumage against the light blue sky. 

Sechuran Fox photograhed by Nate Chappell November 2016 at Chaparri Ecological Reserve, Peru.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/1000 F5.6, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, handheld.  The Sechuran Fox is a small, slender fox endemic to Southwest Ecuador and Northwest Peru.  It's considered threatened by the ICUN.  There were a pair of them hanging right around the lodge, sometimes sleeping on the roof.  This was a difficult exposure with the fox in the shade and the background in the sun.  With birds I will usually use fill flash in such a situation, but the effects on mammals eyes in the resulting image are usually not pleasing.  In post processing I bumped up the shadows in Photoshop by an amount of 15 to bring up the exposure on the fox. 

Tumbes Tyrant photographed November 2016 at Chaparri Ecological Reserve.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/800 F5.6, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld.  The Tumbes Tyrant is a threatened North Peruvian endemic that we were happy to get a few shots of.  Not too much to say on the shot, it's a good sized crop and it was backlight a bit. 

White-winged Guan photographed November 2016 at Chaparri Ecological Reserve.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/1000 F5.6, iso 1000, Av mode, evaluative metering at -0.3, handheld.  On our last morning at Chaparri Lodge just as we were packing up the bags to move on to the next lodge, this guan perched on the stump where the feeder was located right next to the lodge.  It was beautiful early morning light, I called all the group around and it was very cooperative as we got the portraits that we had hoped to get the first morning. It was a fitting way to end our time at Chaparri and next we headed east toward Huembo Lodge, home of the amazing Marvelous Spatuletail.  If you want to read about our experiences photographing the Spatuletail and other hummingbirds in Peru see our December 2016 newsletter. We have a tour heading back to these locations in June of next year. This year we have added multi-flash hummingbird photography to the trip.