Would thermographic cameras be useful for birding? (1 Viewer)

jurek · Jan 26, 2014

I became interested in thermographic cameras shown on some recent nature documentaries. Anybody has any experience with similar things?
Do birds show on these camers?
Can they be used find birds skulking in dense vegetation during the day?
Can they be useful for finding nightbirds?
Are their cost anywhere around practical?

KenM · Jan 26, 2014

jurek said:
I became interested in thermographic cameras shown on some recent nature documentaries. Anybody has any experience with similar things?
Do birds show on these camers?
Can they be used find birds skulking in dense vegetation during the day?
Can they be useful for finding nightbirds?
Are their cost anywhere around practical?

I've often wondered the same thing jurek...whether they could become an essential piece of kit for ''hunting Locustella's'' during day time, or would their profile on screen be indistinguishable from small rodents?

cheers

Xenospiza · Jan 26, 2014

In a similar vein: does anyone have experience using night vision goggles for owling? They always tend to be closer than you think...

Farnboro John · Jan 26, 2014

Xenospiza said:
In a similar vein: does anyone have experience using night vision goggles for owling? They always tend to be closer than you think...

I use night vision kit quite a lot for mammals, and I've found it perfectly adaptable to owls, not least because my Yukon scopes have a near IR torch that picks up eyeshine perfectly (this is great for finding immobile small rodents and works fantastically for owls with their big eyes.)

My looking around ones are 3X mag and I have a 1X which is for looking through my camera to enable focussing in darkness so the first light on the subject is a flash. (I'll post a pic in a minute or two.)

If you're going to do stuff at night I can't recommend them enough.

John

dantheman · Jan 26, 2014

Farnboro John said:
My looking around ones are 3X mag and I have a 1X which is for looking through my camera to enable focussing in darkness so the first light on the subject is a flash. (I'll post a pic in a minute or two.)

Nice stair carpet

(The bits we can see).

I've always liked the idea of trying night vision equipment. Thermo sounds useful too. One day perhaps!

jurek · Jan 26, 2014

KenM said:
I've often wondered the same thing jurek...whether they could become an essential piece of kit for ''hunting Locustella's'' during day time, or would their profile on screen be indistinguishable from small rodents?

cheers

I think that they can be identified by movements, if not by shape - assuming they are warm enough to stand out of background!

I thought not just about Locustellas, but also things like Phylloscopus warblers, rails, partridge and grouse, tropical skulkers etc. Once you know where exactly a small thing is in the vegetation, obtaining normal views is much more easy. Always something is showing between leaves, and the bird is momentarily coming into view...

Farnboro John · Jan 26, 2014

dantheman said:
Nice stair carpet (The bits we can see).

I've always liked the idea of trying night vision equipment. Thermo sounds useful too. One day perhaps!

A Yukon 3 X 42 nightscope fits in your pocket and retails for about £200ish. It often surprises me that people who will spend thousands on their daylight kit won't knock out a couple of hundred to keep going when the sun goes down - the place really changes then.

John

Ratal · Jan 26, 2014

Farnboro John said:
A Yukon 3 X 42 nightscope fits in your pocket and retails for about £200ish. It often surprises me that people who will spend thousands on their daylight kit won't knock out a couple of hundred to keep going when the sun goes down - the place really changes then.

John

My first Nightjar was 1997 on Warminster training range. I kept seeing a flitting shape going across the tree line and thought 'bats'. Kicked in the IR illuminator and watched mesmerised for a good 20 minutes.

Beautiful bird. :t: I agree 100% with getting good kit to roll back the nights secrets.

Mono · Jan 26, 2014

Thermal cameras of the quality used on TV wildlife programmes are way outside the budget of personal use. Looking at those used in the building sector and £2000 buys you 120 x 120 pixels!

citrinella · Jan 28, 2014

jurek said:
I became interested in thermographic cameras shown on some recent nature documentaries. Anybody has any experience with similar things?
Do birds show on these camers?
Can they be used find birds skulking in dense vegetation during the day?
Can they be useful for finding nightbirds?
Are their cost anywhere around practical?

Yes, we have tried a thermal imaging camera.
No, we could not see the birds.
Vegetation is almost certainly a big problem.

A few years ago the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) very kindly lent me their thermal imaging camera to try just this. We were trying to find skylark, to find their nests in short crops of winter wheat. In that context, it did not work, we could not see the birds at all - birds would get up which we had failed to detect.

We could see hares, quite easily.

We thought that birds might be too well insulated to be detected - they are much better insulated than mammals; and/or that vegetation might be screening them - the vegetation was short and we used an elevated viewing position but vegetation does block infra-red wavelengths; and/or that they were just too small - we did not trouble to try, say, geese or swans to test the issue specifically, the why's were not that relevant to us.

Granted this was a few years ago and technology surely must have changed. Even since GWCT's purchase of this equipment things had changed. When asked initially GWCT raised an issue over insurance as the camera had cost them (IIRC) £20k. This issue was dropped when it was found that direct replacement would then cost (again IIRC) £2k.

Even if technology has advanced somewhat, I suspect thermal imaging equipment might not be the best investment for finding birds.

Mike.

jurek · Jan 28, 2014

Thanks Citrinella a lot for the reply! That is what I suspected. Time to return to spotting these Locustellas the usual way.

Or maybe deploy camera with some clever movement-recognition software

.

John, do you know a similar equipment which is easy to carry, like bins rather than a scope?

Farnboro John · Jan 28, 2014

jurek said:
Thanks Citrinella a lot for the reply! That is what I suspected. Time to return to spotting these Locustellas the usual way.

Or maybe deploy camera with some clever movement-recognition software .

John, do you know a similar equipment which is easy to carry, like bins rather than a scope?

That's my entire rig, the nightscope is just the bit on the back fitting snugly against the viewfinder of my camera so I can manually focus the 500mm in the dark.

Wex Photographic are knocking them out for £189 at the moment, I'd call that a good deal:

http://www.wexphotographic.com/buy-...=22506479169&gclid=ciyjw8awobwcfexktaodsnoavg

John

jurek · Jan 28, 2014

Would it be possible to fit one to one of the lenses of the binoculars? And how much it would reduce the field of view?

Farnboro John · Jan 28, 2014

jurek said:
Would it be possible to fit one to one of the lenses of the binoculars? And how much it would reduce the field of view?

After a quick hand held test the answers seem to be its possible, but not necessarily easy; and quite a bit, but bear in mind I was using a 3X nightscope with 10X bins.

My view would be that 3X works for me at night, and there are more powerful lenses e.g. 5X if you prefer, without the increased difficulty of looking through daylight optics.

Bear in mind that looking through additional optical elements attentuates the light reaching your eye. I advise sticking with the brighter image of using just the nightscope rather than going for higher magnification and losing the convenience of the scope as a single unit.

This opinion has been developed while I have been sorting out my night photographic rig, for which I use a powerful LED IR torch to get sufficient IR light on target at ranges up to 60m while looking through a 1X Yukon scope, Canon EOS 50D and 500mm f4 lens. I get the full FOV of the lens, but that's not much when you are trying to find and hold a moving target in the dark.

By contrast using the 3X nightscope handheld is a piece of cake, the FOV is very wide and its built in IR torch is well matched to the power of the scope. I even use it when walking along sometimes, it saves walking into branches and suchlike. In addition if two of you are using these scopes, the IR torch makes taking directions essentially redundant: all you do to get on something is find the disc of IR light of the other chap's unit and bob's your uncle.

John

Mono · Jan 30, 2014

This is the camera they used on Winter/Autumn watch
http://www.selex-es.com/documents/737448/6029654/body_SLX_Merlin.pdf

I hate to think how much it cost.

Would thermographic cameras be useful for birding? (1 Viewer)

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