Bootilicious

I am referring to my liking for gum boots, hiking boots and the likes. The picture below shows various species of them in my collection.


Of these, I am partial to gum boots for my wilderness walking.

The main reason for this is to protect myself from snake bites. We have 5 deadly-poisonous inland snakes and several other venomous snakes, which can cause “considerable discomfort”—to put it mildly. In Sri Lanka the annual death rate due to snake bite envenoming is one of the highest in the world with 6 deaths out of a population of 100,000. In 2008 alone, there were 33,000 snake bites in this country. This number comes from reports generated through hospitals, and do not take into account of patients resorting to traditional type of treatment. So the actual figures should be higher.

My secondary reasons for preferring wellies, as gum boots are affectionately called, are to enable me to cross shallow streams without getting my feet wet (and without removing shoes, argh!), and to keep off leeches (note, you have to wear them with leech socks).

Wellies have a bad reputation for being cumbersome and downright uncomfortable. This explains why most people dislike them. This was true for me too. With time, however, I have got used to them. As I use them heavily these days, their wear and tear is high. And I find myself in a difficult position when I have to replace them in this country. As I like to try them before purchasing, ordering them online is not a viable option for me.

Despite being a rubber producing country (and not to mention us topping the list of deaths due to snake envenomation), the types of gum boots made in Sri Lanka (in Arpico and DSI) are not designed for field naturalists like us in my opinion. .

I will explain.

1. Most of them are too short —Apart from increasing exposure to snake strikes, this "shortcoming" make them unsuitable for crossing shallow streams especially in rain forests here. Gum boots got to be at least 15-17 inches tall to make them suitable for people like us.

2. The lower back (back quarter) of most of the boots in the market are too rigid making them less flexible. This part of the boot needs to be flexible to alleviate discomfort during walking.

3. Sole is 'wrong'. This causes leg pain during longer walks. Makers should really do some sole-searching, and take a look at international brands to correct their basic design flaws.

When I want to go gum boot shopping, I have just one choice. That is to visit the Malwatte Road in Colombo Fort. When you enter it from the railway station side, the shops on the left side sell the wrong type of product, explained above. The ones suitable for people like us are available at the more doggy shoe stands on the right. An that is where I rightly go shopping!

These vendors get quality “imported” ones delivered to them in small quantities from various “informal channels” especially with the Colombo Harbour also being not too far away. The prices are generally reasonable here and there is a lot of room for bargaining. Last week, I was quoted Rs. 2,500 for an “Auda” safety gum boot. With fifteen minutes of creative negotiations, I walked away with it, paying just 1,650 bucks.

I hope people at DSI and Arpico will address the shortcomings mentioned here, and improve their existing product range. After all, there is a good target market, if they did their market research right.

Corona

I was in the market looking for a decent headlamp to spot night birds and wildlife. After doing some research, I found the perfect one, the Corona LED Headlamp from Outersports.com. It is a product of Princeton Tec, the makers of high quaility light products.

For spotting nocturnal birds and wildlife, it is important that the source of light that you use for it is held as closer to your head as possible in order to detect their eye-shines. Corona fills your entire field of vision with an even distribution of light simulating daylight conditions and achieves this task spectacularly well. The wide beam of light it produces prevents the need for your eyes to adjust quickly from very bright to dark areas and eliminates eye fatigue. The wider beam also eliminates the need to move your head too much – a real pain in the neck with previous headlamps, which offered narrower field of view.

Corona uses eight permanent high-power 5mm white LEDs (producing white light) and you can selectively light eight, five, three or one of them depending on the scene you want to illuminate. Once the number of LEDs have been turned on like this, you can further dim them or get them to flash continuously. I do not require using the latter feature much, but the dimming function helps a lot to observe animals that are wary of brighter lights.

Proving this point, a few days ago, I spotted a family of Asian Palm Civets in my yard with my Corona. I observed them with all 8 LEDs on in dim mode – just to be on the safer side. The Palm Civets just went on with their normal behaviour, in foraging at distances of 10-15m and they did not appear to be too bothered by my headlighting them. Eventually, I left the scene leaving them where I found them.

The angle of the light source of this headlamp can be altered to get the light coming at a downward angle from the forehead to illuminate the subject just perfectly for binoculars and/or cameras to focus upon simultaneously. With a hand-held torch it was always a difficult task to hold it in one hand and try to focus on the the subject with the binoculars from the other hand. (Yes ladies, we men are hopeless at multi-tasking). I found the eight LEDs in full brightness quite sufficient to identify subjects about 25m or so, which is really enough on most situations on jungle walks.

The Corona LED headlamp requires three AA Alkaline or Lithium batteries. The burn time varies between 70-30 hours depending on the intensity and mode. Corona uses current regulation so the light source chosen will remain at a constant brightness as long as the batteries have sufficient voltage to run them. It has very good power-saving options. The Dim mode is known to produce 40-50% of the maximum light of high mode with as little as 25 % of the battery power as on high mode.

For night birding, I prefer a light source that produces white light as opposed to yellow light. This is because the yellow light casts a tawnier hue on otherwise none-tawny night birds. Take a look at this male Sri Lanka Frogmouth that was digi-scoped at a daytime roost with the available low-light.

Now look at the same bird photographed with a torch producing yellowy light.

The photogaph below is the same bird photographed by a friend named Riza (not the drummer) using a dSLR camera and in a different angle.

You can see that the real ground colour of the bird is grey. In the picture taken with a torch with yellow light, the male appears tawnier and therefore very much like a typical female of this species (well, there's also a colour morph of the male that is more rufous-brown and approaching the colour of the female). Corona LED Headlamp will avoid you falling in such visual pitfalls and you will be able to see the colours of the birds closer to what you will see in daytime. BTW, click here to read detailed article by me about the plumage of this interesting-looking bird.

I tried the Corona as the light source (for focusing and clicking) for night time macro photography too. However, it is not used as a headlamp but as a hand-held lamp. This is because you cannot wear it on your head and find the subject in the view finder as the big macro flash that I use (Canon MT-24EX) blocks the fore-head area where the light source of the headlamp would be placed. This Common Shrub Frog in my yard was photographed with Corona hand-held together with the camera. I used three LEDs on in dim mode for this.

The outersports package arrived in air-mail direct to my house and I did not have to waste time at the ‘big post office’ in Colombo and go through custom procedures as in previous such deliveries.

Disclaimer: Directing light sources at the eyes of the nocturnal animals can be harmful for their vision, so please dim the lights/use brightness-reduction methods when viewing them. And never overdo it.

What is your binocular?

Mine used to Leica Trinovid 10 x 42. Its current price in Adorama is $1,395, but if you shop around you can find cheaper offers.

I paid Rs. 65,000 for mine in April, 2002. It was a slightly used one, but I didn't mind that as a brand new Leica Trinovid was beyond my reach. Before this, I had two binoculars—Bresser "Shark" 7 x 24, and Bresser 7 x 50 "Action"—both received as birthday gifts when I was younger. Sadly, both of these didn't stand my abuse under field conditions for long.

So, I found myself in the market for a pair of binocs again.

For much of my early years as a budding bird watcher—I used no optical aids—for reasons beyond my control. A proof for this is this picture taken on 11 May, 1990 on my first trip to Horton Plains National Park. (I am the sweetest one of the lot.)



This highland trip was led by the bloke in shorts—one Kelum Manamendra-Arachchi—who as this picture testifies shows, was at the prime of his youth.

Kelum (ayya) is a celebrated biologist in Sri Lanka now. He has discovered and described countless number of vetebrates new to science from Sri Lanka, and have gone on to author, and co-author papers such as this, this, this, this and this.

By the way, today marks 19 years since my first trip to the Sinharaja rain forest. It was with the school's nature club from 23-25 April, 1990. I will be making a private trip to Sinharaja to celebrate this special anniversary, later this month.

Coming back to binocs, in late February, 2009, I treated myself for a Swarovski EL 8.5 x 42.
Being a top of the range binocs, it came at a big price tag of $1,660.(It was actually $1,825, but I got this special deal thanks to Ben Allen). However, its superior light gathering power—helpful in low-light conditions, increased depth of field and jaw-dropping overall optical quality amply justified the premium price that I paid for this toy.

As a naturalist guide, I often find myself birding in dense and dimly-lit rain forests conditions. I have experienced that the visual clarity of this binoculars is markedly better in dimly-lit conditions compared to my previous model. This was really evident when I trained my new toy on the cryptically-coloured Sri Lanka Scaly Thrush at the Sinharaja rain forest during a recent tour. The light garthering power was just amazing.

In early this month, having arrived early at Haputale to pick up a few bird watchers to start a tour, I found myself birding in their hotel gardens. There, I picked a pair of Tickell's Blue Flycatchers down a ravine. When I focused on one of them, I was simply blown away by the vivid colours that I was seeing. I have seen this bird for many years; however, it has never occured to me before that this bird has such a gorgeous blue patch in the forehead. Perhaps, I may have overlooked this feature before.

According to the specifications, the Swarovski EL binoculars allows a minimum close focusing distance of 8ft, which is ideal for odonatoholics like me. This excellent review says that you can achieve a minimum focus of 7 feet, which I think is probably right although I have never measured it precisely.

If you are an avid bird watcher who is in the market for a pair of binoculars, prefer nothing but the best, and don't mind paying a little more in exchange of quality optical experiences, go for these.

I like this comment mentioned by a reviewer in Amazon:
"Looking through these things is like ingesting some kind of powerful drug. One is transported into a new reality, one in which even mundane objects become endlessly interesting..."

So, what is your binocular?