Pittas inhabit rainforest habitats where they exploit invertebrates living in the leaf litter. While they may call from high in the canopy they are essentially ground dwelling birds.
We recently visited Victoria Park Nature Reserve near Alstonville in Northern NSW. This park protects one of the last surviving remnants of original rainforest known as Big Scrub. Booyong Nature Reserve near Bangalow is another similar rainforest/Big Scrub remnant. These patches are popular with birders because they are good places to find rainforest species such as Brown Cuckoo-Dove, Topknot Pigeon, Brown-capped Emerald-Dove, Rose-crowned Fruit-Dove, Superb Fruit-Dove, Wompoo Fruit-Dove, Wonga and White-headed Pigeon, Green Catbird, Regent Bowerbird, Spectacled Monarch, Black-faced Monarch, White-eared Monarch, Russet-tailed and Bassian Thrush, Paradise Riflebird and Noisy Pittas.
Being winter, Noisy Pittas have come down from higher altitude rainforest in the nearby Great Divide so it was not surprising that we soon heard the distinctive call of this bird and then found a bird foraging in leaf litter beside the boardwalk which loops through a section of the forest.
Photographing birds in rainforest has two significant challenges. One, the birds are often heard calling high in the canopy where it is both difficult to see them and photos are near impossible, and two, on the forest floor light is very low making full open aperture and high ISO necessary to achieve reasonable shutter speeds to avoid image blurring.
The camera was set at ISO 12,800 and f5.6 and even then, shutter speeds were 1/60s and 1/100s which for a 600mm lens is really too slow. Never the less the results after culling half the shots and some sharpening were acceptable enough to post here.
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Note the powerful thrush-like bill which is used to move leaf litter and probe underlying soil for food. The long legs, needed to walk around in deep leaf litter are buried in the litter or behind a fallen limb so are not fully visible.
An earlier post from 2021 featuring an immature Noisy Pitta in littoral rainforest beside an ocean beach at the Brunswick Heads Nature Reserve can be viewed here:
