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My output from this family of birds so far is two species, photographed in Thailand and Srilanka (chickadees). So not much. In Ecuador, I managed to photograph 8 species (antpittas)! They are difficult to photograph and without the help of local guides it would have been impossible. The guides had to spend a lot of time beforehand to make them an attraction for observers, photographers. They live naturally on the bottom of a tropical moist forest. They are small, secretive and difficult to see, let alone photograph. There is not much light on the forest floor, which is another difficulty in photographing representatives of this family of birds. Bird tourism in Ecuador is growing and there are more and more places where local people create conditions for bird watching and photography. Naturally, they devote a lot of time to this, so that when the tourists arrive, they can summon the birds from the forest, which, always the voice of the guide, they associate with some tidbit for which it is worthwhile to appear on the prepared stage for photography. These treats are usually earthworms or other insects. These encounters will be remembered forever. The guide leads a group of a few, rarely 10, people to such a place through a dense, tropical forest where the bird is supposed to appear.
Everyone freezes in stillness - absolute silence applies - and waits. The guide, meanwhile, whistles, smacks and throws bait and sticks to the place where the bird is supposed to appear. One guide became so fond of it that gave it a name 'Willy'. He would call him by name 'Whilly- venga, venga'- which means- Whily, come, come. After the call, a smile appeared on the tourists' faces. As a rule, the birds appeared, although on 3 occasions we ended up only waiting for them. And, so there is no rule. The birds are amazing. If you manage to tempt them with a free meal, they suddenly emerge from the dark forest, among the twigs onto the prepared stage with their treats, and freeze in stillness. This is the moment when a good photograph can be taken. They look at the people, the people at him in complete stillness and silence. Despite the high ISO, times of 1/30-1/100 are all you can hope for. After a while, the bird very energetically shifts a few tens of centimetres and again freezes in stillness. Again, pictures are produced. Without the earlier observation, working on the birds, I would probably have come back without pictures of antpittas. And this time I managed to photograph their largest and smallest representative and six other species of antpitta. There is reason to be happy! I have set up a tag in the search engine: „Antpitta, pitta” in order to be able to show all the galleries of this family of birds on my website and to pick them out from the overloaded group of passerines. This text is common to all 8 galleries of Ecuadorian antpitta.
Yellow-breasted Antpitta-Giant Antpitta - Moustached Antpitta - Ochre-breasted Antpitta - Chestnut-crowned Antpitta - Equatorial Antpitta - White-lored Antpitta -Plain-backed Antpitta
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