Camouflage Lens Coverings - Do the birds care?

[Henry Domke]

What is your experience photographing birds with and without camouflage lens coverings?
Has anyone done careful testing?

I'm not referring to the potential benefits of ding and weather protection.
I'm just asking: do the birds care?
Are there any clear benefits of having a camouflage pattern on the lens?

Thanks!
Henry

[Alan Lillich]

Here's one piece of anecdotal evidence that they might care. I was laying on the ground at New Island in the Falklands when a shag landed about a foot from me. It stayed for several minutes, looking me over. I'm convinced it was looking for nesting material. Thanks to Nancy Bell for the photo.

[John Guastella]

I'm just asking: do the birds care?

The answer is no, of course not. Birds see for a living (and by that I mean they have one of the most sensitive visual systems of all the animals). They're not going to be fooled by some camouflage material covering your lens. In fact, even if the camouflage covering reduces the amount of light being reflected by the lens body, and thereby makes it slightly less obvious, birds will still immediately attend to the huge front element of the lens as soon as it is pointed at them.

John

[Richard Mc Donald]

It's not so much, if anything, that cammo gear will hide you from animals but more so the prevention of useing UV brightners that manufacturers use in washing powder.

Rather than me woffle on about how this actually works see this link ...

http://www.atsko.com/articles/hunting/how-game-animals-see-smell.html

Richard

[Harry Colquhoun]

I'm just asking: do the birds care?
Are there any clear benefits of having a camouflage pattern on the lens?

Given that birds see in the UV spectrum as well, a big white telephoto will probably look like a flood lamp to them. On the flip side, I've heard anecdotal stories of commonly-hunted birds freaking out when approached by humans wearing camouflage colours while not reacting the same way to people wearing brighter colours.

I use one for the mentioned ding and weather protection and if it makes the birds more comfortable then that's just a bonus to me.

Cheers,
Harry

[Roger Clark]

It's not so much, if anything, that cammo gear will hide you from animals but more so the prevention of useing UV brightners that manufacturers use in washing powder.

Rather than me woffle on about how this actually works see this link ...

http://www.atsko.com/articles/hunting/how-game-animals-see-smell.html

Richard


Richard,
Thanks for posting and interesting read. However, there is a lot of misinformation on the page (and probably the scientific literature). For example, much is made about UV sensitivity and statements like rods are 1000 times more sensitive than cones (it is only a factor of 50 in humans), and animals (forget which they were talking about--probably deer) have 1000 times better night vision than humans. Pretty good feat when the dark adapted human eye is sensitive to only a few photons per second!

Much is made about UV whiteners. You can see some of the effects of whiteners at: http://speclab.cr.usgs.gov/spectral.lib06/ds231/datatable.html See Chapter 5 and click on the column for the 0.2-3.0 um plots. For example, a white cotton fabirc: http://speclab.cr.usgs.gov/spectral.lib06/ds231/PLOTS/A/fabric_gds437.27904.w1.gif
shows the 440 nm peak (the plots are in microns, so 0.44 micron). Note the peak only enhances the reflectance about 10%. Compare that to an olive drab nylon:
http://speclab.cr.usgs.gov/spectral.lib06/ds231/PLOTS/A/nylon_gds428.28362.w1.gif
Compare the fabrics spectra to those for plants and wood in Chapter 6. Camo fabrics can be an excellent match to the natural word over the full 380 - 700 nm (visible) spectral range. Actually any non blue, magenta, purple or non white fabric is pretty dark in the UV. So anything tan, green, brown, red would be pretty dark in the UV.

The point is that if the material is green, yellow, orange, or red, any UV brightener is pretty much irrelevant and going to be a small fraction of the total reflected light. Contrary to what I read in the article, human vision has good sensitivity down to 380 nm (.38 microns) and cone sensitivity of blue peaks at about 450 nm, or very close to the UV brighteners. See: the spectral plot at the end of the page: http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/human-eye/

So bottom line: if one is concerned about the big white lens, add the covering, probably best to make it green and/or brownish. But in my opinion, it does not matter. I've photographed for years with no camo on the big white lenses. Then I figured why not add it for the lens protection. I did and do not see any difference, whether birds or other wildlife.

Roger