Unless your scope is image-stabilised, you need a tripod. And if you’re a photographer there may be times when you want a tripod for extra stability. One of these is new and designed for birdwatchers. The other has been around, in one form or another, for about 40 years – it’s different, though…

Reviewed by David Chandler

Vanguard VEO 5 264CO Carbon Fibre Spotting Scope Tripod, £280

A new, traditional tripod, with four-section, twist-lock, carbon-fibre legs, made for birdwatchers. Build quality is very good, the moving parts work well and it’s plenty tall enough. I am just over six feet tall and with an angled 88mm scope, this tripod was a good height with the legs fully extended and column down. Unless you’re a giant, this is tall enough. The two-way pan head is designed for scopes. It rotates and tilts smoothly and locks/unlocks by twisting a telescopic, two-length handle – use it longer for better, smoother action (it wasn’t always easy to locate the handle release button by feel though). Twisting the handle adds resistance to head movement – twisting it more locks the head. The head locks very well, with just a small rise detected at 60x. It’s Arca compatible, so, depending on your scope, you may not need the supplied QR plate. For scope use, this is one of the best heads I’ve come across.

The leg twist locks are easy to use. There’s a rubber grip, big enough for one hand, on one leg – I’d like it bigger and on more than one leg. In more or less still conditions, once the scope had settled, the view was totally stable even at 60x. In a 14mph wind applying a bit of hand weight to the tripod delivered a pretty stable view at 60x about 30 metres away. At greater range there was detectable movement at 25x – you can add weight to the centre column (there’s a hook for that) to improve stability. The centre column is hexagonal, enabling the legs to fold in closer to form a noticeably compact package, but the column still works in a traditional hide clamp. This tripod doesn’t feel heavy. With a Mulepack and about 2kg of scope, it was very carryable. The aluminium version costs £220.

Maximum height: 167cm (141cm with column down). Minimum height: 21cm. 8kg load capacity. 26mm diameter legs. Easy clean twist locks. Retractable rubber/spiked feet. Split centre column. Three leg-angles. Two-year warranty. Collapsed: 58cm long, 9.25cm diameter. 1,920g. With luxury bag, QR plate, blanking cap for centre column, hex key. vanguardworld.co.uk

Benbo Trekker Mk 3, £120 (legs only)

Benbo is a contraction of ‘bent bolt’, a feature that makes this tripod different and versatile. A single, large handle locks and unlocks the legs and column. It makes setting up this tripod very different to a typical tripod – loosen that handle and all the legs and the column are mobile. It takes a bit of getting used to but the unusual design gives you great versatility – to quote the blurb, the “flexibility of (the) leg joint mechanism combined with (the) ability to swing (the) centre column through 180 degrees, allows (the) camera to be positioned at almost any point relative to the tripod legs”.  It can provide support in positions that would be tricky or impossible with a more conventional tripod. Build quality is good. Unusually, this tripod is made in the UK, in Tiptree in the West Midlands, and customer service is UK-based.

The aluminium legs have just two sections with a screw mechanism for locking and rubber spiked feet. The upper sections telescope into the lower sections (that’s different), making use in water a less scary proposition. Its quoted maximum height is 1.6m but it depends how you set the legs. With about 20cm of column extension it was tall enough for me to use standing with an 88mm angled Kowa and, in more or less still conditions, gave a stable view right through to 60x. It also works for sitting on the ground viewing/photography. You’re not likely to buy this tripod just for scope use, but it’s versatility might help if you routinely watch from a tricky slope for example, though I didn’t try that. If you’re a photographer though, who wants to support a camera down low and/or in tricky positions, this could be for you. The photos give you an idea of what it can do. A hook at the bottom of the column allows you to add some ‘ballast’ to help with stability and/or balance. Note that in some ‘extreme’ set ups – with the column extended horizontally and the lens angled down for example– supporting a heavier lens/camera combo (I tried c2.6kg) is asking too much. But that is asking a lot.

The Trekker Mk 3 doesn’t feel too heavy (2kg) but at about 76cm folded (without a head) it is quite long. I got it to work with a Mulepack, but you’re unlikely to do that – I suspect you would hand-carry it or use a strap, adding a camera or scope when you get to your destination. You can buy it with a fixed or swivel head. I recommend the swivel head – it moves through 180⁰ and adds versatility. If you just buy the legs you can add a head of your choice (1/4” thread) from Benbo or elsewhere, or you can buy a kit with a carry bag and a mini ball & socket head (£175).

Extended: 1.6m.

Folded: 76cm. 2kg.

Load capacity: depends on head.

Benbo professional ball & socket head (£65): 7kg.

patersonphotographic.com

Vanguard’s carbon-fibre offering

Benbo: Made in the UK. Exceptional versatility from Trekker Mk3.

Sometimes get more than a sense of something prehistoric when looking at certain birds? There is a reason for that, writes David Callahan…

Look at an Ostrich: the long, powerful, scaly legs, the large, clawed feet, the emotionless, alert eye, its speed as it runs across parched flatlands. Or even check out a chicken in a farmyard (or, if you’re really lucky, a wild Red Junglefowl) – the aggression, the same scaled legs and speed on the ground, the same pitiless look. You could almost be watching dinosaurs.

Science shows that many such superficial evaluations are just that – but in this case, it’s true: birds are dinosaurs.

BAD or BAND?

For some time in the late 20th Century, two camps existed among palaeontologists (at least, according to the ever simple-minded mainstream media): the BAD and the BAND. The Birds Are Dinosaurs group was pitted against the Birds Are Not Dinosaurs group, never the brain shall meet, but a succession of fossil discoveries resulted in a gradual consensus: birds are the last remaining group of a major dinosaur radiation.

Accumulated fossil evidence and research has shown that the dinosaurs did not become entirely extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago due to an asteroid impact, as was thought for a long time. The largest, reptilian-presenting species were certainly killed off by this cataclysmic event, but some tiny mammals survived – and, along with them, small feathered dinosaurs, most already very recognisable as birds.

Many of our historical reconstructions of dinosaurs, reaching a persuasive popular peak in the Jurassic Park movie franchise, have been misleading, encouraging the perception that dinosaurs were giant lizards, devoid of hair or feathers. What is popularly known as the ‘age of the dinosaurs’ covers the Mesozoic Era, which lasted from 252–66 million years ago (MYA), including the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods of geological time. Ignoring the advances and prevalence of arthropods, flowering plants and bacteria, from our macro human perspective, dinosaurs and their huge (non-dinosaur) reptilian relatives, pterosaurs and ancient sea reptiles (ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs etc) dominated the Earth’s biological systems as apex herbivores and carnivores – a system superficially paralleled in African macrofaunal ecosystems today.

Early on, dinosaur body forms began to emerge that predicted the two-legged, beaked appearance of birds in Triassic forms such as Coelophysis. Growing up to 3m long, Coelophysis was a ground hunter, reminiscent of a roadrunner, and had large eyes which matched modern birds of prey in their accuracy. Its long snout was lightened by the fenestrae, gaps in the bone structure that decreased its weight, equivalents to those found in the skulls of modern birds. With a toothed jaw, filamentous feathers and serviceable, short arms, Coelophysis is also likely to have been sexual dimorphic (having clear differences between males and females) – and could even have had a wattle like some gamebirds.

Red in tooth, claw and feather

Coelophysis was an early example of a dinosaur group called the Theropoda – one of three, along with the Sauropodomorpha, containing familiar huge, long-necked herbivores such as Diplodocus, and the Ornithischia, which groups together the likes of Stegosaurus, Triceratops and Iguanodon by their bird-like hip joints, although they aren’t actually closely related to birds. Theropods are prehistorically characterised by having hollow bones and three-clawed toes on each of four limbs. The earliest examples are fragmentary, but later forms possess fossil impressions of feathers, as far back as the mid-Triassic. Certainly, members of Coelophysis’ sister group, the Coelurosauria, almost all had a covering of feathers, and this later included Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor (along with Puffins, Herring Gulls, Spotted Flycatchers, etc).

Now there is evidence that, even this early on, colours may have been present in these proto-feathers, allowing them to be used for display and signalling (think of a Wheatear’s white rump or the crest of a Hoopoe), and later, even the downy pterosaurs may have been as brightly coloured as birds. The non-avian dinosaur, Sinosauropteryx prima, could not fly but possessed a feathery down on its body showing the remains of ginger pigmentation cells revealing it had ginger and white stripes on its tail.

The reason we can be so confident that birds are dinosaurs is not only because we have fossil evidence of skeletons with countless similarities – now, we also have preserved soft tissue, with ever-increasing specimens showing feathers identical to modern birds. Any residual debate is moot.

Think of the wildly different forms birds have taken to date, from albatrosses to manakins, and vultures to Goldcrests. In the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, such forms were just a fraction of the forms of myriad theropod dinosaurs. Dinosaur might literally mean ‘terrible lizard’, but ‘fabulous bird’ could be more accurate.

Jurassic lark

The similarities between the greater group of theropods and modern birds vary. For decades since its discovery in 1861, the late-Jurassic (c150 MYA) Archaeopteryx was the only known truly bird-like dinosaur. However, from the mid-20th Century, fine late Jurassic lake sediments from China began to produce extremely well-preserved bird and bird-like fossils.

The resulting discoveries are still being unearthed – so many species are now known that an (only slightly tongue-in-cheek) field guide exists with convincing reconstructions of dozens of species. Mesozoic birds had many adaptations in parallel with modern ones. Take the recently described Shuvuuia deserti from the late Cretaceous of Mongolia, which may have had owl-like hearing and eyes able to see in near-complete darkness, probably for hunting insects. Its contemporary Natovenator polydontus was a waterbird with an elongated body, long neck with nostrils near its duck-like bill base, evidence of sensitive nerves at the beak tip and an efficient diving shape. The cuckoo-sized Mei long from the volcanic ashes of early Cretaceous China had a long tail for balance and short wings, like a roadrunner, and was found preserved in a bird-like roosting posture, with its head tucked beneath a wing.

The fusion of collarbones into a wishbone or furcula is found in many ancient theropods, including Velociraptor, while a half-moon shaped wrist bone enabling the wrists to be folded backwards is also commonplace (essential for the evolution of folding wings). There is clear reduction of long tailbones into a pygostyle, the stub to which bird tail feathers are attached, found in non-avian theropods. Take Caudipteryx zoui, which had asymmetrical feathers and a pygostyle to which graduated feathers were attached in a fan-like arrangement. The feathered condition was clearly typical of theropods, whether in the bird lineage or not. Theropod pelvises gradually begin to point backwards in an avian manner, and birds and dinosaurs have almost identical brooding postures when on the nest (as seen in several fossils preserved by volcanic ashes, millions of years before Pompeii).

Most theropod bones, especially the more recent ones, are hollow and light, reducing body weight and allowing for greater lift and air flow during flight – although this may also have helped ground-dwelling, non-airborne forms when hunting, say, insects. A major part of this explosion of bird-like forms involves the presence of feathers on all four limbs, the loss of teeth, the formation of a beak and the increasing hollowness of bones, along with the evolution of a sternum to support flight muscles. Birds also inherited many conditions from ancestral dinosaurs: they lay eggs, walk on two legs, have feathers and endothermic (warm-blooded) metabolic systems. For most of their existence, birds have been a constituent part of the massive evolutionary radiation of theropod species; it’s only from a present-day perspective they appear unique.

To use a populist example, it is now generally accepted that Velociraptor, made world-famous by Stephen Spielberg, was covered in feathers, shown conclusively by quill knobs on its bones comparable to modern birds. Fossils of its close relatives show even more detail, including completely feathered body coverings. This knowledge was being confirmed even when Spielberg’s movies were being made, but being hunted down by a large apparent ‘chicken’ was deemed to look ridiculous on screen (although it still frightens me!). Despite our desires for reptilian monsters, Velociraptor could be considered more akin to a carnivorous cassowary with its vicious hind claws and ability to outrun prey.

The two-legged kind

It is notable that birds have retained their bipedalism, only evolving the ability to fly with their forelimbs and tails. Vertebrates such as bats or the long-extinct pterosaurs use membranes stretched between all four limbs. The simplest way for flight to evolve was the adaptation of forelimbs to carry and develop pre-existing theropod feathery filaments into strong tail and wing feathers. The theropod radiation includes related animals that fly like birds, glide like flying squirrels and have membranes attached to their legs like bats, as well as others that have clusters of feathers on their bodies and limbs, the purpose of which we are still hypothesising.

Anchiornis huxleyi from the late Jurassic of Liaoning, China, has copious arrays of feathers on all four limbs, implying a gliding lifestyle – as well as the intriguing possibility that birds may have evolved from a four-winged ancestor. In any case, it seems ancestral theropods were trying out different ways to take to the air with some success (bear in mind that the existence of any species is an evolutionary success – and that all these species probably outlived the length of time humans have been on the planet!).

Of course, powered flight defines a bird, currently flightless birds having lost that ability from volant ancestors. Archaeopteryx is well known for having a feather arrangement typical of birds, albeit with skeletal features roughly halfway between ‘typical’ dinosaurs and birds, with its toothed jaws and clawed forelimbs. The jury is still out on how bird flight evolved precisely, partly because many apparent birds appear to have flown or glided in several different ways, as we saw above. Evolving from arboreal living seems the simplest, Occam’s Razor-deploying, explanation, and beginning with a gliding form using forelimbs seems likely from the aerodynamics involved.

In the 1970s, a new theory emerged, popularised to the extent that it was covered in depth on the BBC’s children’s wildlife show, Animal Magic. Dinosaurs, it proposed, were warm-blooded (endothermic) like modern birds, rather than cold-blooded (ectothermic) like reptiles. The evidence included bone dissection revealing dinosaurs grew almost as fast as birds – certainly faster than lizards – and also possessed not just flight feathers but a thick downy covering to retain body warmth. Bird-like rigid lungs and air sacs are present almost throughout the lineage, enabling a highly efficient single-direction air flow, essential in bird endothermy with its fast-acting metabolic processes. These were organisms capable of sustained and prolonged bursts of energy and with a curious intelligence – like birds. Even the non-theropod dinosaurs were progressing towards this state, but it apparently occurred in theropods first.

The ancestors of modern birds appear to have died out mainly because of sheer size, with many parallel and ‘primitive’ bird groups also disappearing as the asteroid hit, when they were rendered uncompetitive in a resource-depleted world. We know that only mammals under 50g managed to make the transition into the modern, Cenozoic, era, and a similar threshold hindered bird survival. It helped if you were as far away from the Yucatán Peninsula epicentre as possible, but no one yet knows conclusively whether flying, eating seeds, fish or meat, or reproducing quickly, were advantages in surviving the catastrophe. After the Fifth Great Extinction, surviving forms of small birds and mammals were able to overtake other vertebrate groups to dominate the world’s ecosystems, and rapidly evolve and radiate.

There are some who retain a belief that birds cannot be dinosaurs. This is akin to seeing a mouse and believing that it can’t be related to a Blue Whale. It is now self-evident from the copious fossil evidence supporting it. In the right circumstances, a basic animal blueprint can take on multifarious shapes and sizes over relatively short periods of geological time under the pressures of evolution and a changing environment. Also, the admittedly patchy fossil record has thrown up no other potential ancestor for birds – only theropod dinosaurs.

The fact that birds are with us now and continue to take so many varied and fantastic forms, with almost 11,000 species in existence, only shows how fit they are to continue to weather all kinds of dangers. Perhaps they will even survive the Sixth Great Extinction, and us.

There are some who retain a belief that birds cannot be dinosaurs. This is akin to seeing a mouse and believing that it can’t be related to a Blue Whale.

While June and July can be relatively quiet months in the birding calendar, things get more exciting in August – a month packed with migration and action. Here are five birds to look out for this month.

Long-tailed Tit (juvenile)

The darling little Long-tailed Tit is a bird which, unlike most cute little birds, has undergone a notable increase (12%) in its UK  population over the last 30 years. After the youngsters emerge from their famous ball-like nests of lichen, spiders’ webs and feathers, they travel around with their parents, and will continue to rove in family groups until the nest spring. In their wanderings, they could turn up anywhere where there are suitable bushes, trees, hedges and so on, including suitable gardens. Juveniles look similar to adults (including the long tail) but have dark (not white) cheeks and a red  (not yellow) eye-ring.

Wood Warbler

Very much a breeding bird of northern and western woodland in the UK, Wood Warblers start to disperse and migrate in early autumn (i.e. this month). However, they are infamously tough to find on passage. They are somewhat similar to Willow Warblers, but have very long wings, a shorter tail and a strikingly white belly, contrasting with bright yellow on the throat and upper breast. The yellow extends to the face, and the long supercilium ( pale eyebrow). Carefully check any area where Chiffchaffs and Willow Warblers gather in August.

Black Stork

A very scarce visitor from the south and east, the Black Stork is a not a difficult bird to identify. They are huge birds (similar in size to White Storks), but unlike their more familiar cousins, they are largely black (or dull, dark greenish-brown in juveniles), except for a white belly and inner underwing coverts. The upper wings are wholly blackish as are most of the underwings, making them straightforward to identify in flight. Like those other huge long-legged wading birds, White Storks and Cranes, they fly with the neck fully outstretched.

Common Sandpiper

August is a famous month for its juvenile (and post-breeding adult) waders, heading south. Most come from the arctic breeding grounds, but Common Sandpipers are UK breeders, with about 13,000 pairs mainly along upland rivers and lochs in the north (and west) of the country. Passage birds are found on gravel pits, reservoir edges and so on, bobbing along, picking insects.  Common Sandpipers are small brown waders with very long tails (for waders), relatively short, yellowish legs and a well-known sliver of white on the breast sides, in front of the folded wing. The fly low over the water on bowed, flicky wings, showing the obvious white wing-bar on the upper wing.

Red-necked Phalarope

Another wader which nests in the UK – but in tiny  numbers – is the titchy Red-necked Phalarope. Roughly Dunlin-sized, they appear particularly small owing to the ultra-fine bill and the fact that they habitually swim, in search of their invertebrate food, and we are not used to seeing such small birds out on the water. In August, juvenile phalaropes move south and can turn up in suitable waterbodies; they may feed along the edge like a ‘conventional’ wader, but can also be out on the water, often spinning around in tight circles, stirring up food.