Trying out my new camera!

Two weeks ago I was able to buy a used Nikon D7200 with a Sigma 150-600mm sport lens for a good price from a local birder, and I was finally able to really try it out at New Vision last weekend. This time I was joined by a local birding friend of mine, Ahmad Abrar.

We had to navigate through some thicker weeds this time as we took the left path, but soon we reached the area of the path the local farmers had cleared. Bird movement was really slow but we did see 5 Indian Silverbills fly to a tree full of weaver nests. I’d only seen them for the first time here last week and then only in flight, so it was nice to get some better views here although I see them at our house all the time.

My first decent photographic opportunity was a young Brahminy Kite perched on one of the New Vision signs. The weight of the lens (6 lbs!) makes it a bit difficult to handhold and get sharp photos and I’m still getting used to using a DSLR again so the photo didn’t turn out great…

We had a few somewhat interesting birds in a juvenile night heron and one or two barn swallows, but it just felt like very little bird movement. I spent a little bit trying to photograph this Gram Blue (butterfly) but it’s fairly hard to photograph insects with a long lens.

We did see a Plaintive Cuckoo fly past which was actually my first sighting this year, though I’ve heard them several times. Especially surprising was the lack of any bitterns, it took quite awhile before we saw any Yellow Bitterns even though previous times both Yellow and Cinnamon had been pretty common.

I had fun getting some photos of a young Asian Pied Starling feeding on Ivy Gourd (Coccinia Grandis).

Next we saw two Intermediate Egrets, my first since before lockdown sometime! There was one lone House Swift which I tried to get a few photos of, but failed to get decent results because of the poor lighting. I’ve been paying close attention to the house type swifts in Bangladesh recently because they really haven’t been studied much and are presumed to be House rather than the very similar Little Swift mainly based on a couple of older specimens. Now these two swifts are so similar that some consider then conspecific, and really photos will not be able to conclude which species is for sure present in BD, but photos could reveal certain population trends across different parts of the country. What we really need is for some of the experts to be able to either capture a few swifts or find injured ones to get the necessary feather measurements, wing emarginations, etc. to be able to properly confirm whether or not House Swifts are the species in BD or not.
Although my photos were pretty bad I’m adding one here just for fun because I’m super interested in these! To me this looks the classic House Swift with overall quite dark colors, narrow white rump patch, and general shape looks like classic House to me, but I’ve noticed the swifts near our house are slightly browner, possibly have larger white rump patches, and are slightly more chunky which can be pointers to Little Swift but nothing definitive at all.

Now that I’m done with my little ramble on swifts let’s get back to the birding! Our next sighting and photo opportunity was a young Black-crowned Night-Heron flying past and giving pretty decent photo opps.

We then decided to take a bit of a break on the path and relaxed a little after cycling ~7 miles and birding for over an hour. I kept checking for the Pheasant-tailed jacana we had seen here last time, but no luck. A few young Brahminy Kites were circling right near where we were sitting and I had fun trying to snap a few shots of one coming in to join them.

I also tried to get some good photos of the Bronze-winged Jacanas, but no 5 star photos yet.

We also saw both a Little and Cattle Egrets taking us to three egret species for the day. The last few times I’ve only seen one or two Little Egrets so it was fun to see a few other species today. And finally as we were starting to head back out we saw our first and only Black Bittern of the day! No decent photo opportunities since it was quite a ways out. It seems they know when I have a good camera and decide not to let me get very close…

A waterhen was right out in the open as we rounded the one corner of the trail, and I snapped a few photos but it quickly disappeared and I wasn’t able to get any decent shots because of the angle.

As we headed out we had tried taking a few shots of a loud Large-billed Crow, lighting wasn’t great, but it was cool to get photos showing the thicker feathering on the throat.

I spent a few minutes trying to get photos of the weavers, but all the images came out a little soft either because of the slightly poor lighting or user error (second is probably more likely…)

Despite the birding feeling pretty slow all day we had reached 46 species by the end which is about par for this time of year at New Vision.
eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S71592998

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