2002 - Midwest Peregrine Falcon Restoration Project

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Each cooperating state or province has, in addition, its own list of cooperators.
BREEDERS SUPPLYING PEREGRINES FOR 2002 RELEASES
• Mark Bolton, Hugo, Minnesota (Kentucky releases)
• Walter Crawford and Mike Cooke, World Bird Sanctuary, St. Louis, Missouri (St.
Louis releases)
• Bruce Haak (Iowa release)
• Bill Murphy (Kentucky releases)
READING BANDS WITH TELESCOPE AND DIGITAL CAMERA
In 2002, I (HBT) turned to digiscoping in hope of increasing my ability to read
peregrine color bands in the field. Digiscoping is the ungainly word for taking digital
photos through a telescope. There is a lot of technical information available on the Web
about this topic and that is the place to start. Here, however, are some things I learned by
experience this past season. My scope is a Leica Apo-Televid 77with an angular zoom
20X-60X eyepiece, and my camera is a Nikon 5000 with the largest memory card I could
get, 530 mb.
I get best results with the camera at full optical zoom (3X) and the scope at
30X to 50X.
With luck, photos good enough to read bands can be taken of falcons up to
400 feet away, maybe a bit farther with excellent light
Use the steadiest tripod you can get and extend it no more than necessary.
Motion is the constant enemy. Fast shutter speeds that might control motion
are usually ruled out because the huge magnifications, often over 100X,
demand too much light.
Take as many shots as you think you need, then at least that many more.
Often I would go home with 80 or 90 shots of a single bird and find that only
on one or two could I see the band.
Peregrines often sit in one place for a long time. Even if the legs are not
exposed, sooner or later the bird may stretch or preen and give you a look at
the left leg. These events are not predictable, so take shot after shot, hoping to
catch what you need. The one great advantage of digital photography is that
the shots don’t cost anything, once you have the equipment.
My Nikon camera has a bewildering array of options. For digiscoping, it
seems to do best focussed at infinity with the shutter speed programmed by
the camera. Some of the Web sites advise using the “point and shoot” option,
letting the camera do the rest.
Choose “normal” or “fine” for resolution. “Hi” is tempting, but the “.tif”
images are painfully slow to download and to manipulate in a computer.
Images in “basic’ do not hold together well when enlarged by the computer.