Written by Jeff Bouton
In 2023, I did something really cool! I was able to capture images & videos of over one tenth of the world’s bird species with my iPhone in a single year! I never intended to do a “Big Year” (as in the movie with the same name), but by year’s end it was undeniably a big year for me in birding, digiscoping 1,050 bird species through the eyepiece of the Kowa PROMINAR spotting scopes using a matched Phone Skope adapter kit with my iPhone.
In a typical Big Year, birders will plan a route visiting strategic locales chosen to maximize the numbers of birds encountered. In my case, though the route was pre-determined by my work schedule. I work for Kowa Sporting Optics as their Sales & Marketing Manager to the Nature Markets based in the US, and a huge portion of my job revolves around consumer birding festivals and events. Generally, these events are scheduled at peak times for birding in their respective regions, often showcasing specific local birding phenomenon and always providing awesome birding opportunities. As an attendee you can join field trips and bird with local experts who know the hidden hotspots for local specialty birds. Working these events, is a different experience though with field time limited by scheduled vending hours, workshops & presentations. None-the-less, as an avid (crazed?) birder, I’ve always taken advantage of field time available, sampling all of these awesome local birding opportunities at each event.
As a birder, a bird guide and then as a birding rep to the optics industry, I’ve always carried a spotting scope in the field. Not only because the job demanded it, but because I’ve always loved the unparalleled views and unmatched level of detail I could appreciate in every view of every wildlife encounter through a premium spotter. It was a breath-taking view of a Snowy Owl through a spotting scope that started me as a birder actually, and in the early 90’s while guiding professional bird trips in Barrow, Alaska I first used disposable film cameras behind the eyepiece of my Kowa spotting scope to document rare birds. This was before the term “digiscoping” was ever coined, so I was an early adopter and have been actively digiscoping for over the past 2 decades. Through this period I’ve been an active innovator in the digiscoping revolution and (hopefully) have helped to influence the development of more effective products & digiscoping techniques along the way. With great gear and ample wildlife opportunities, I find myself taking A LOT of digiscoped images each year, but I never began keeping track of species captured though the scope until 2020. While stuck at home, unable to travel, I started keeping what I called my Kowascoping (digiscoping through the Kowa gear) year list and as travel opportunities slowly opened in mid-2021, I was amazed to capture images of 518 species that year thanks to an epic trip to Costa Rica in December ‘21. Pura Vida!
I use the word “avid” to describe my obsession with birding & digiscoping, but others have described this is manic and even nuts! Putting the level of this mania into perspective, on January 1st 2023, I began birding near my South Florida home at 4:00 AM and had tallied 126 bird species by day’s end. While I only digiscoped eight of these birds on 1/1, by the end of that first week, I’d digiscoped over 100 bird species and reached 148 digiscoped birds by January 31st without leaving my home county! In February, work travel began bringing new digiscoping opportunities. I was asked to give a digiscoping workshop at the Colombian Bird Fair in South America and went straight from there to work the San Diego Bird Festival. Colombia boasts more bird species than any other country in the Americas and San Diego holds the title as the “birdiest city in the US” due to its unmatched annual list of birds seen, so great opportunities to kick off the year. I had limited time over just a few days at both and rarely strayed from the busy city of Cali, while my trip to San Diego was plagued by daily rains. Despite these challenges though, my digiscoping year list soared to 336 species by February’s end and my next planned trip was sure to add a bunch more.
Kowa organized the first ever “digiscoping only” team to compete in the Champions of the Flyway bird race for conservation in March ‘23. This annual event is a big day competition drawing teams from around the globe to the arid regions of the Negev Desert in southern Israel, an area renowned for spectacular spring migration of birds moving north out of Africa and spreading across Eurasia to breed. While the race is the “hook”, the real winners are the birds as the main goal of the event is to raise dollars for critically endangered bird species. Kowa raised some eyebrows amongst attendees when we narrowly missed digiscoping 100 species for the day here, but we were honestly prouder yet that the 3 Kowa sponsored teams present raised over $22,000 for conservation of the critically endangered, Red-breasted Goose!
By the end of March, my digiscoped tally had climbed to 463 and in April, and as the peak of migration hit Florida, I pushed the year list to 514 (just shy of my personal best after only 4 months). Back-to-back May trips to the Biggest Week in American Birding & the Indiana Dunes Birding Festivals moved the count to a new record 556 digiscoped. Unfortunately, the following two months in Florida produced almost no new birds as migration was over and I’d long since caught up with the local bird species so I’d have to wait to travel again and for fall migration to add more. In July, Kowa launched our popular new 66 mm PROMINAR spotter at the Global Birdfair in the UK, the world’s largest birding event and the only true consumer trade show (without field trips) highlighting the latest and best goods and services in the birding industry: international tourism, optics, apparel, books & of course digiscoping adapters (again, raising conservation dollars through ticket sales). I followed this trip with three consecutive, domestic festivals, highlighting the TSN-66 PROMINAR spotting scope here in the US. I began in Colorado tracking down some montane specialty birds and rolled straight into back to back Arizona events (Southwest Wings & the Southeast Arizona Birding Fest) adding specialties of the desert Southwest. I wrapped up August at 694 digiscoped bird species for the year and counting!
The fall migration cycle was slower than usual with a handful of events visiting the Florida Keys Hawkwatch (Peregrine Falcon Capital of the World), the Cape May Bird Observatory’s fall festival, and the heralded Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival, bringing the count to an amazing 727 digiscoped bird species by November. I had no scheduled events after this in 2023 and was stoked to think I’d topped my best year by 50% and was content. Miraculously though, I was contacted by long-time friend, Herbert Byaruhanga (owner-operator of Bird Uganda Safaris), and was asked to speak on digiscoping at the inaugural International Conference for Women Birders in Uganda, Africa! I happily accepted and was extremely inspired by the challenges overcome by members of the Uganda Women Birders Club and the advice given by global leaders in the birding community that spoke here as well. I was humbled and felt incredibly blessed to be there and share some of my knowledge with all present. Following the conference, I sampled just a sliver of the abundant wildlife in the “Pearl of Africa” and it was astounding. On a whirlwind 7-day trip (that would usually take 3 weeks), I saw loads of expected large mammals (Elephants, Lions, Giraffes, Hippos, Mountain Gorillas, Chimpanzees…) BUT also saw an amazing 329 bird species. I added 238 of these to the digiscoping list returning home in the third week of December, with memories of a lifetime and 965 total digiscoped bird species.
Through the year my crazy digiscoping chase had developed a bit of a following and now these friends on social media were saying “keep going…you have to get 1,000…” To that point, all of the birds I’d photographed were either in my home county or at birding events attended through my work and I’d need to take one more trip to reach four digits, but where?!?… My answer came to me before I was able to even really ponder that, when another dear friend of many years, Carlos Bethancourt (co-owner of the Canopy Family eco lodges in Panama) chimed in on my post stating simply, “Let’s do this, come to Panama!”. A couple personal messages, two plane tickets and a week later, my son and I were in Panama birding one of my favorite spots with arguably the best guide in country at the world-famous Canopy Tower! We had just two short days to spare here, but the rainforest habitats near the tower were renowned and we were in Carlos’ home court, so I knew we had this in the bag. With his uncanny skills and amassed local knowledge we actually broke I was digiscoping my 1,000th bird species before lunch on day one with a White-tailed Trogon. By the end of the second day we’d encountered 176 birds and I digiscoped 85 of these finishing the year at 1,050 bird species digiscoped, an apparent world record!
Encountering, so many bird species requires fantastic wildlife opportunities provided by these many great birding events out there and I highly recommend attending these events to anyone interested in wanting to see and learn more about birds. However, having birds present is the first of many hurdles to capturing a digiscoped image. You still need to get a view, place the subject in the scope, mount your phone and take an image which can be a major challenge especially with small, flitty birds or “fly-by’s” that may only be in view for mere seconds.
After years of constant spotting scope, I can quickly swing the scope and acquire my target and I’ve practiced opening the camera app as I’m pulling my phone from my pocket to save time. However, there is no way to compensate for a clumsy adapter with loads of extra knobs, levers, and clamps that don’t provide instantaneous centering & consistent repeatability. If your adapter requires constant readjustments to secure and re-center your phone, then you will miss many photo opportunities when shooting wildlife where you may only have mere seconds to secure the image.
Full disclosure, I have no vested interest in Phone Skope. They like many other adapter developers first approached me to test a kit and give feedback in 2011. I used the kit for a bit and sent back feedback and expected that would be it. To my surprise and to Phone Skope’s credit though, within 2 weeks I received another packet with three different prototype rings and a note asking me if any of the enclosed adapters worked better than the first. One was a perfect match, and they switched sales of the old ring adapter with the new model immediately. I’ve been a fan ever since, both for this level of commitment to get it right for their end users, but for the consistent, proven performance of their products in the hundreds of thousands of images I’ve taken since! Unlike every other kit I’ve tried, Phone Skope’s matched case and adapters allow instant centering with no adjustments, PLUS the ability to instantly switch between multiple digiscoping lenses. Some others have solved the centering issues, but you are hamstrung by being limited to use of only a single lens on your phone which is a great loss of versatility and increased magnification available on most of today’s more sophisticated phone models. Being able to seamlessly slide between lenses on the phone in a fraction of a second is something I use all the time and again only Phone Skope’s innovative designs allow me to do this..
The results speak for themselves MORE images captured with less fiddling – the fact that these Phone Skope kits average lighter, more compact and far less expensive than other, more complex alternatives is just a bonus. Thanks again Phone Skope I literally could not have reached this bar without your highly effective, simplistic digiscoping solutions!